President Donald Trump said San Francisco could be the next target in his crime crackdown, which has included deploying that National Guard to Democratic-led cities over the objections of local officials.

“I’m going to be strongly recommending at the request of government officials… that you start looking at San Francisco,” Trump said Oct. 15 during a White House event on crime.

Long a counter culture mecca, San Francisco has nurtured the political careers of leading Democrats such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Sending federal troops there would likely be met with strong resistance.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently said in an interview that Trump should deploy the National Guard in San Francisco, his hometown.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the New York Times in an interview that was shared by tech billionaire Elon Musk on X. Musk added "SF downtown is a drug zombie apocalypse.".

Benioff later sought to clarify his comments, praising the city's progress on public safety in a social media post. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in an Oct. 15 press conference at the city's police academy that crime is down, and federal intervention isn't needed.

Trump called San Francisco a “mess” during the Oct. 15 White House event and indicated other cities also could soon see federal intervention.

“We’re going to go into other cities that we’re not talking about purposely,” he said, adding: “We’re going to have a surge of strong, good people, patriots, and they get to go in, they straighten it all out.”

Trump has deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles; Washington; Chicago, Portland, Oregan and Memphis, Tennessee, on what he has described as crime fighting missions. The deployments have faced strong opposition from local officials, who have called the moves unnecessary and authoritarian, and are being challenged in court.

The president continues to press ahead, telling military leaders in a recent speech that he wants to use troops to fight "the enemy within."

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” Trump said.

Trump frequently points to Washington in arguing his use of the military has been effective. Crime already was trending down when Trump deployed the DC National Guard, though, and some guardsmen have been used for tasks such as lawn care.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump says San Francisco could be next target for anti-crime push

Reporting by Zac Anderson, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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