U.S. President Donald Trump in Dearborn, Michigan, January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
In the classic sci-fi film series that began with James Cameron's 1984 masterpiece "The Terminator," insufficiently regulated artificial intelligence became self-aware and decided to destroy humanity. Despite real-life AI CEOs like Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Open AI's Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk warning that the world could actually arrive at a similar dark fate, President Donald Trump insisted on Monday that Americans have nothing to worry about because "the only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper had a scathing rundown of Trump's position.
"President Donald Trump this afternoon completely dismissed dire warnings from top tech leaders who say that without more guardrails, their own AI technology could lead to the end, theoretically, of humanity," Tapper said. "Throughout the day and even just in the past few minutes, the president has been on a Truth Social rant, writing, 'AI taking over the world, destroying humanity and all the things bad is a hoax. No different from Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, and all of the other hoaxes and scams.'"
He added, "Then came, just moments ago, 'I am the hoax buster and I'm right now breaking another hoax that AI is gonna take over, consume and destroy the world.' If the president is saying that the AI fears are a hoax the same way those other matters were, that is surely cause for concern, because none of them were hoaxes."
Tapper continued, "The Russians did try to interfere in the 2016 election. President Trump did pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look for dirt on the Bidens. President Trump did encourage the assault on the Capitol on January 6th. By the way, climate change is not a hoax either, even though President Trump just called it so in another one of his posting rants."
Describing Trump as a president who lashed out at facts he does not like, Tapper observed that "even from some White House officials privately saying that they're worried about Trump's apparent lack of concern. The AI company Anthropic said it banned some accounts possibly tied to foreign governments or militaries conducting shady research that Anthropic was afraid could support the development of biological weapons. Then this weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay saying AI advances are indeed moving too fast and that companies should deliberately slow the pace. That idea was then endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and then by Elon Musk, who founded xAI and Grok."
Tapper then said, "It's hard to imagine more alarming, direct warnings, and from leaders who have historically worked closely with President Trump, given that AI has been a huge driver of economic growth — and that growth appears to be what President Trump is clinging to as his solution to any potential AI problems, as presented on Truth Social earlier today, a simple quote: 'the only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!'" Trump also claimed the protests against AI and data center construction are part of a Chinese conspiracy.
He concluded by sarcastically describing Trump's position as being, "Everything will be fine, people. We've got an anti-terminator in chief."
Trump's administration is closely tied to the AI industry, from appointing Musk to slash social welfare programs to purchasing military technology from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. Musk has repeatedly expressed white supreamcist views and Thiel is obsessed with finding the Antichrist.