Trump: Send National Guard to SF, China Rare Earths Trade War, AI's PR Crisis

The episode opens with banter about the hosts' time in San Francisco during Marc Benioff's Dreamforce conference. They mention Benioff's CEO dinner, where Brian Johnson attended and Matthew McConaughey (transcribed as "McConney") sat at one of the hosts' tables. One participant says they sat at table one next to Benioff, and the group jokes that Benioff is "the king of San Francisco" who still has to defer to Trump.

The conversation then turns to the San Francisco Standard's coverage. A participant says Benioff interviewed them at Dreamforce and that the outlet ran a headline saying Benioff "dodges political questions then fawns over David Saxon" on day one. They say the group trolled the outlet by taking a photo at the dinner. Others describe the fireside chat as good and Benioff as a strong interviewer, and they object to treating the interview itself as a transgression. One remark frames this as the outlet not getting "the memo that cancel culture is over", and another says it makes little sense for an AI company CEO to avoid talking to the government's AI official.

A comic aside follows about another conference held in town at the same time, called SlutCon, which one participant says appeared in their X feed. The hosts read joke agenda items aloud, tie them to each other's names, and blame the X algorithm for surfacing the event.

After a joke about one host walking the streets of downtown San Francisco for the first time, the discussion moves to news that Trump said in a press conference he would send troops into San Francisco. A participant notes that the Benioff story came first. Benioff made news for saying the National Guard should be sent in to clean up the city.

A participant who says they talked with Benioff gives more context. Benioff was not misquoted, they say, but the remark came about in a more innocuous way. He was describing Dreamforce security, which brings in "a couple of 100 extra off duty cops". A reporter then asked whether he would bring in the National Guard, and Benioff answered "sure, if they can be cops." That answer became a much bigger story about Benioff supporting a National Guard deployment. Another participant points out that he was talking about hiring them for Dreamforce. The first speaker grants that Benioff "wasn't seeking to make the news that ultimately he made," while adding that they think he should support the idea anyway.

One participant argues San Francisco is an obvious candidate for the National Guard because of the downtown area around Market Street, which they call a "zombie city" area. In their account, it exists because authorities "won't stop the drug dealing", which leaves open-air drug markets on the city's main business street. They praise Mayor Dan Lurie as the best mayor in decades and say District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, whom the group supported to replace the recalled Chesa Boudin, is also good. They argue both officials are still constrained by a very left-wing legal system and "leftist judges". As evidence, they point to hundreds of drug dealers operating "with impunity" downtown and people so sick with addiction that they are living on the street.

The same line of argument grants that the city is bouncing back. It attributes much of that to recovery from a COVID-era low and to the AI boom, which is creating wealth and absorbing vacancy. The blighted area is still singled out. The speaker cites the visit by China's President Xi for a summit, when the area was "magically" cleaned up in forty-eight hours and the drug addicts and dealers "basically disappeared." The speaker admits they do not know where those people were sent. They take the episode as proof the area can be cleaned up "virtually overnight" and propose a targeted federal operation.

Asked whether residents would welcome federal policing, the speaker answers that the city should not be "held hostage by lawbreakers" who threaten violent protests in response to law enforcement. They say they applaud the local arrests and convictions and are not criticizing local officials. They cite a San Francisco Chronicle article reporting that most of the city's drug trade comes from a single town in South America. From that they ask why the network could not be rounded up and deported in one targeted operation.

Washington, D.C. is offered as a model. In this account, Mayor Muriel Bowser publicly said she was not thrilled about the National Guard deployment but cooperated with it, and the result "redounded to the benefit of all the citizens of Washington DC." The speaker suggests San Francisco's mayor could cooperate with the Trump administration in the same way. Others reply that he could do it himself.

Another participant, who says they work in San Francisco, argues the city has gotten a lot better this year. After the Benioff and Trump remarks, they looked up the city's figures. They report that crime is down "30" citywide (the transcript gives no unit) and down 40% downtown, and that homicides are at a seventy-year low. They add that tent counts are at record lows and that, in their own drives into the city, the tents are gone. They say the police force has its first net gain in officers in seven years, and that convention bookings are up 50% and hotel bookings up 60%.

Figures the speaker attributes to DA Jenkins for felony cases this year: - Narcotics: 88% of cases resulted in convictions - Robbery: 85% of cases resulted in convictions - Burglary: 72% of cases resulted in convictions - Gun possession: 70% of cases resulted in convictions - Car break-ins: down to a twenty-five-year low

From these numbers and personal experience, the speaker calls the push for the National Guard "a little shocking". They describe San Francisco as "a city on the upswing" and see "a little bit of a runaway narrative" that does not match what residents are experiencing. They ask the administration to "take a beat," saying the city is not like others on a downward path and that AI companies are setting up there. When pressed, they argue that a backstop is unneeded while the city is doing its job: police hiring is up, enforcement is working and convictions are coming in. The other side replies that the improvement may be happening "because that backstop is there."

One participant links the two stories through the Chesa Boudin recall. They recall Boudin saying Honduran nationals dealing fentanyl were victims, which they place in a "suicidal empathy category" while allowing that it "theoretically could be true". They say ICE and the DEA began deporting these dealers last year because city leadership before Dan Lurie refused to act. The federal government has also been "taking out the boats bringing the drugs here," which the speaker acknowledges is "pretty controversial." They note that San Francisco's government is not trying to block federal action, unlike other cities, and warn that a New York under Mamdani could attract this activity through a permissive culture. Another participant agrees that deporting Honduran fentanyl dealers is an area of strong agreement and asks "what's taking so long?"