Marc Benioff is a classic case of a bad-faith-billionaire philanthropist: he donates hundreds of millions to the communities he lives in — San Francisco and the Big Island of Hawaii — to skirt around public scrutiny.
Benioff, a Bay-Area native whose net worth hovers under $9 billion, will donate a whooping $1 billion to San Francisco in his lifetime. And he’s already spent $250 million on philanthropy in Hawaii, where he bought land in 2000. Most of this money has gone to building hospitals.
But his philanthropy has an agenda: to get critics off his back. When Dana Kerr, a former NPR tech reporter, was reporting on Benioff’s suspicious real-estate-buying spree in Hawaii, for example, Benioff reached out to her directly:
“He started texting me all the time. His texts were all about the philanthropy that he’s doing in Hawaii… He also connected me with people who know about his donations so I could talk to them,” Kerr said on an NPR podcast in March 2024.
“The whole thing really felt like a pressure campaign.”
Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and Time magazine owner, who threw a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2016, is now clearly a full-blown MAGA man. Thrusting himself into national politics, Benioff told The Times last week that he supports Trump’s deployment of The National Guard to U.S. cities — then suggested he send them to San Francisco.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” he said.
Trump has sent The National Guard to “fight crime” in five U.S. cities — led by Democratic mayors: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; Memphis, TN; and Chicago, IL. Lawmakers from those states have said military presence is not necessary, except for Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee.
Trump continues to threaten other cities with military presence, and in some cases, has taken it a step further: In Boston, led by Mayor Michelle Wu, he’s raised the idea of moving the Fifa World Cup. (Trump is good pals with Fifa president Gianni Infantino.)
As for New York City, his hometown, Trump has not only threatened to deploy The National Guard — but has also attempted to claw back millions of federal funds for transportation projects.
During a televised mayoral debate in the Big Apple last night, all three contenders — Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Independent Andrew Cuomo, and GOP candidate Curtis Silwa — said they would not support Trump sending The National Guard to the city’s streets as mayor.
Silicon Valley Reacts To Benioff’s Comments:
Silicon-Valley Democrats have denounced Benioff’s words on The National Guard. Ron Conway, a 74-year-old venture capitalist who backed Kamala Harris’ campaign and has been called “the Godfather of AI, publicly resignedfrom Salesforce Inc.’s philanthropic foundation.
“It saddens me immensely to say that with your recent comments, and failure to understand their impact, I now barely recognize the person I have so long admired,” Conway said in an email to Benioff last week.
Benioff, for his part, has been trying to walk back his comments — by bragging about how much money he has donated to San Francisco: “No one is doing more philanthropy in San Francisco this year than I am,” he told The San Francisco Standard. “Nobody has given more than my family. Nobody has given more than my company.”
(Sound similar to “the pressure campaign” NPR reporter Dana Kerr described during her time covering Benioff in Hawaii?)
Meanwhile, Benioff’s magazine Time, which he purchased in 2018 “to help address a crisis of Trust,” just put Trump on its cover for the second time this year.
Trump, however, hates the picture.
“Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time,” the president wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Wednesday.
Should someone tell him that’s what he really looks like? Sorry, Mr. Trump, but nearing age 80, drinking daily diet cokes, and holding revenge in your heart is not making you — or anyone else — younger.
While our commander in chief addressed his cover photo, he has yet to comment directly on Benioff’s request. Instead, he’s built up a lie around the billionaire’s contentious comments, citing, falsely, that “government officials” in California have called for The National Guard’s deployment.
“We have great support in San Francisco,” Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel at a white-house conference this week. “So, I’d like to recommend that for inclusion, maybe in your next group.”
Ashley Elizabeth Miller 
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