COMMENTARY — For most, if not every, San Francisco Democrat, each day of Donald Trump’s second term has felt like a new level of the Inferno.
But what about our Republican neighbors — are they happy with the results so far? Is this what they wanted?
In many ways, what’s happened shouldn’t come as a surprise. There’s a playbook, and Trump is delivering on campaign promises. On the other hand, Trump has, remarkably, revealed new depths of ignorance and arrogance. Last month, we were treated to his AI-generated video of TRUMP GAZA, the developer-President’s concept of a “Riviera of the Middle East,” featuring a giant, golden statue of himself — and Palestinians relocated.
DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, has been a recurring bonus prize. Could even ardent Trump supporters have imagined Elon Musk, in his black MAGA lid and mirrored shades, gleefully taking a chainsaw to the careers and livelihoods of the federal workforce?
In the last week, the world witnessed Trump’s humiliation of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, deepening that country’s suffering while elevating the aggressor, Russian President Vladimir Putin. The surprises grind on unabated, because the Hell Trump has wrought wouldn’t be so hellish if it was predictable.
In San Francisco county, nearly 63,000 residents, almost 16 percent of its voters, cast their November ballots for Trump. One of them, Nicholas Berg, somehow has no qualms with how Trump’s presidency has gone so far.
“I'm pretty happy with the start of Trump’s second term,” Berg told Gazetteer in an interview. “I'm particularly excited about DOGE. The federal government is pretty, pretty bloated,” he added, citing its deficit spending. “Something’s gotta give.”
Berg is a vice-chair of the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee, or RCCC. Better known as the SFGOP, it’s the party’s local governing body. He is also a member of the Briones Society, a group that sees itself as moderate Republicans pushing San Francisco to the center, and eventually nudging it rightward. Last year, the group scored an electoral coup of sorts, with its representatives, as of January, now comprising 17 of the SFGOP’s 25 members.
When I attended the SFGOP’s monthly meeting and a dinner party before the November election, I was surprised by how thoroughly the national party, which is to say Trump, permeated the events. It was an election year, but for an organization devoted to local matters, numerous members and attendees sported red MAGA caps and expressed their piety to Trump. At the meeting, a candidate vying for a committee seat who had served time for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection lost by one vote. Berg told me the tenor has since changed.
“I think if you came to a meeting today, what you’d see is a shift in the focus,” Berg said. “Certainly among the Briones delegates, our focus is much more on local matters, making sure that we’re creating an opposition to the one-party, Democrat rule of San Francisco, and making sure that we’re arguing for moderate, sane policies.”
I took him up on the offer and went to the SFGOP’s meeting Wednesday night at the Irish Cultural Center in the Sunset. I kept my visit brief because considerable time was wasted, with the committee’s more conservative members testing the patience of the Briones leadership in a debate over arcane changes to rule making and bylaw procedures. Boring, and nerdy. Except, after I left, it occurred to me that it’s the kind of infighting Democrats can hope will eventually take hold at the national level.
In our interview, Berg was careful to point out that he was expressing his own views, and not speaking for the SFGOP or Briones. Where Musk is concerned, he is unbothered by an unelected billionaire with rich government contracts exerting so much influence. George Soros and Rahm Emmanuel played similar roles in previous Democratic administrations, he said. In Berg’s view, Trump’s berating Zelenskyy isn’t appeasing Putin, but instead a money saving measure forcing Europe to stand up for itself.
Berg downplayed Trump’s influence on San Francisco politics. And yet, it’s telling that someone who identifies as a moderate Republican has so fully embraced the President’s radical agenda. It reflects a trend that other San Francisco Republicans told me about privately, of their once moderate friends and family members growing more extremist.
None of this comes as a surprise to Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University, who says there’s no such thing as moderate Republicans anymore — anywhere, including in San Francisco. There’s no room for dissent or variation. “Trump and Elon Musk are openly threatening anybody who opposes them,” McDaniel said, citing polls showing Republicans prefer “strongman behavior,” and their belief that Trump should be permitted to lead without interference from the courts or Congress.
“I would love to hear people from the Briones Society disagree with that, but I suspect they won’t,” McDaniel said. At best, Republicans with misgivings might mute their opposition, he added, meaning they may withhold criticism of a Democrat they respect.
Bill Jackson, a Briones Society co-founder, didn’t respond to an email seeking a response. Its other co-founder, Jay Donde, said in an email that the group is “focused on local politics, so I’ll respectfully decline.”
McDaniel said he’s surprised that Trump hasn’t yet targeted San Francisco more directly or forcefully, and expects that day is coming soon. It could arrive as an attack on Mayor Daniel Lurie, who, lacking a viable Republican candidate, Briones endorsed. Or the inevitable could come when the city requires urgent help from the federal government.
“If San Francisco is devastated by an earthquake, and Trump withholds disaster money, like he’s threatened to do from L.A., what will they do? Will they stop being Republicans? I doubt it,” McDaniel said “When push comes to shove, these people are Republicans, and moderate is not a thing anymore in the Republican Party — they stamped that out. They are Trump Republicans.”
As I concluded my interview with Berg, I asked him about perhaps the most egregious of Trump’s orders in the first 46 days of his second term: the sickening feeling of his decision to issue a blanket pardon for the roughly 1,600 insurrectionists involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“I do think that people should be accountable for their actions,” Berg said. “I'm going to leave it at that.”
In a follow-up email I asked Berg if those who followed Trump’s demand that they storm the Capitol should be held accountable, why should the president — who was impeached but not convicted for inciting it — get a pass? Berg didn’t respond. Part of the answer is Trump’s transgressions are so numerous and varied, that even the worst of them have become a forgotten footnote of history. Especially, it seems, for Republicans.