Comedians canceled a Dreamforce performance after Benioff drew backlash for supporting Trump

Comedians Kamil Nanjiani and Ileana Glazer pulled out of performing at Salesforce’s annual tech conference this week after the company’s CEO Marc Benioff made controversial comments expressing his support for President Trump.

Last week, Benioff told the New York Times that he thinks Trump should deploy the National Guard to reduce crime in San Francisco, comments that drew backlash from Silicon Valley philanthropists and Democrats.

On Friday, Benioff fully retracted his comments and apologized.

“I don’t believe the National Guard is needed to take care of security in San Francisco,” he wrote on social media site X. “My previous comment came out of an abundance of caution regarding the incident, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused.”

Salesforce, a software company based in San Francisco, provides a platform that businesses use to manage customer information and track sales. The company confirmed the comedians had left but the entertainers have not publicly said what led to the last-minute cancellation. A source close to the company told the San Francisco Chronicle that Nanjiani fell ill, causing his scheduled opener Glazer to cancel as well.

Nanjiani and Glazer have not commented publicly on Benioff’s comments about the National Guard.

Both comedians, however, have been critical of Trump and his anti-immigration rhetoric in the past. Earlier this year, Glazer spoke at the “No Kings” rally, which organizers say is to fight back against the authoritarian policies of Trump and his administration. This week, she promoted the upcoming series of protests, scheduled to take place on October 18, as non-partisan issues on Instagram.

The San Francisco Standard previously reported on the cancellation.

Benioff faced growing backlash after comments he made about Trump and the National Guard. The controversy overshadowed Dreamforce, a conference in San Francisco that featured prominent speakers including tech executives, government officials and entertainers.

Nanjiani played Dinesh in the HBO series “Silicon Valley” and co-wrote and starred in the 2017 Oscar-nominated film “The Big Sick.” Glazer co-created and starred in the Comedy Central series “Broad City” and the 2024 comedy film “Babes.”

In their absence, comedian David Spade performed at Dreamforce on Thursday afternoon, closing out the conference.

Before the meeting, which ended on Thursday, Benioff appeared to walk back his comments.

On social media site X, he said he was trying to make a point about making the conference as safe as possible.

“Keeping San Francisco safe is the responsibility of our city and state leaders, first and foremost,” he wrote in X Benif. He also said he was donating an additional $1 million to fund a large hiring bonus for new police officers.

Benioff, who has previously said he is an independent and was once a Republican, has sided with Democrats and supported liberal causes such as business taxes for homeless services. But he also criticized public safety in San Francisco and threatened to move Dreamforce from San Francisco to Las Vegas.

The conference brings nearly 50,000 people to the city, generates $130 million in revenue for San Francisco and creates 35,000 local jobs, according to Salesforce. The company announced earlier this week that it is investing $15 billion over five years to advance artificial intelligence in San Francisco.

On Thursday, prominent Silicon Valley investor and Democratic financier Ron Conway resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation. In an email first seen by The New York Times, Conway told Benioff that he “hardly knows now someone I’ve admired for so long.”

“Your obsession and constant annual threats to move Dreamforce to Las Vegas are ironic, as it is a fact that Las Vegas has a higher violent crime rate than San Francisco,” Conway wrote in an email. “San Francisco doesn’t need a federal invasion because you don’t want to pay for extra security for Dreamforce.”

Conway, the founder and managing partner of SV Angel, is widely known as the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” because of his early investments in major tech companies such as Google, Facebook and PayPal. SV Angel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Salesforce spokesperson said in a statement that they are “deeply grateful to Ron Conway and his incredible contributions to the Salesforce Foundation Board over a decade.”

On Friday, entrepreneur and philanthropist Lorraine Paul Jobs published an article in the Wall Street Journal referring to some of Benioff’s previous comments and claims that he had given San Francisco nothing. The widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs also founded and heads the charity, Emerson Collective.

“The message below this comment was unmistakable: In his Eyes, generosity is an auction—and policy is the prize awarded to the highest bidder,” she wrote. “But this giving is anything but generosity expecting control.”