US President Donald Trump. Photo credit: Ron Sachs/CNP / SplashNews.com / Splash / Profimedia
US President Donald Trump has already sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis, and judges have blocked his decisions to deploy troops in Chicago and Portland, reports AFP.
In an interview broadcast by Fox News on Sunday, Trump threatened to send the military to San Francisco, another city controlled by Democrats.
“Next time we're going to San Francisco,” the Republican US president said.
“The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was really one of the great cities of the world. And then 15 years ago, it got plowed,” Donald Trump added.
He has repeatedly exaggerated the extent of crime and problems in some American cities to justify large-scale troop deployments widely contested by local Democratic leaders.
In late September, the president suggested using American cities as “training grounds” for the country's military.
“I told Pete (Hegseth, the defense secretary, no) that we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, the National Guard,” Trump said at a meeting in Quantico, Virginia, with US generals and admirals from around the world.
The first deployment, in Los Angeles in June, came after protests against illegal immigration crackdowns.
The decision was heavily criticized by California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who is frequently at odds with the US Republican leader and who many believe will run for president in 2027.
Trump's remarks about San Francisco come after Marc Benioff, the head of San Francisco-based tech giant Salesforce, issued an apology after calling for the National Guard to be sent to the city.
Benioff, once a favorite of the left, has drifted to the right in recent years, along with other tech titans.
However, his advocacy of a military intervention in San Francisco sparked anger and a negative public reaction, causing some of his former friends to distance themselves from him.
San Francisco occupies a special place in the Republican worldview. The city, where its homelessness and drug addiction problems are well-documented, is frequently featured in right-leaning publications as a prime example of what they see as the decline of America's urban centers under Democratic control.
