Top line
President Donald Trump’s new government website, powered by artificial intelligence, has been widely mocked on social media Tuesday for addressing topics Trump avoids and taking an objective stance toward others he often uses or constructs as a weapon.
President Donald Trump applauds on stage during the America.gov launch event at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium September 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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Key facts
A new America.gov website for navigating government services using artificial intelligence went live Tuesday and uses a chatbot to answer questions about government services — such as benefits, sign-ups or renewals — by scraping more than 29,000 government websites, Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder and director of the White House National Design Studio, said when announcing the new site.
The website, powered by Google’s Gemini and SpaceXAI’s Grok, claims that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, citing the National Archives’ 2020 Electoral College results, and it says that Trump was in office when the nominal price of retail diesel in the United States reached its highest nominal price.
America.gov says total aid to Ukraine under the Biden administration is “much lower” than the $350 billion figure cited by Trump repeatedly and disputes his assertion that 25 million people have crossed the border under the Biden administration.
When asked about the Trump administration’s stance on communism and the Democratic Party – as Trump and his allies increasingly conflate the two – he replied: “America (.gov) does not describe political positions, parties or ideologies. America is for official government services, benefits and steps to follow – not commentary on administration or political parties. »
Asked if there was evidence that non-citizens vote frequently in elections – as Trump pushes for legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register – he gave an overview of laws barring non-citizens from voting and information on voter registration and said: “America does not judge how often non-citizens vote…that is an evaluation of the evidence and a debate, not a matter of government service.”
Tangent
Trump welcomed AI leaders including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI Chairman Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang for a White House lunch with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday. The meeting comes as Trump has resisted calls for stricter regulation of the industry, amid warnings that AI could soon become dangerous, potentially deadly to human civilization, if development is not slowed, and several cases of AI agents gone rogue. Trump said the leaders agreed to sign a sort of “constitution” that would be “morally binding” and “truly a form of protection,” adding that he saw a lot of “self-policing” in AI. Trump responded “we have people who love our country and the world” when asked why there shouldn’t be more formal safeguards and said “no” when a reporter asked whether it takes more than love to protect humans from AI.
Crucial quote
“All our lives we have become accustomed to a government so big that the citizen feels very, very small, but with America.gov the entire American government will adapt. . . in the palm of your hand instead of forcing citizens to search through the endless maze of tens of thousands of terrible websites and government rules and over 10,000 forms,” Trump said.
Key context
The recent panic around AI was sparked earlier this month when Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon resigned from the company and warned that if development wasn’t slowed, AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” Others in the industry echoed Coxon’s concerns. Amodei then officially wrote a letter calling for new risk prevention. The letter was co-signed by Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk and Dennis Hassabis of Google Deepmind. Trump has downplayed those concerns and resisted calls for new regulations, citing fears that the United States is falling behind China. “He who gains super intelligence wins,” Trump said during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. “We are now well ahead of China and all other countries, and we will continue to do so.” Trump claimed after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week that he and Xi had agreed to “leave (AI) exactly where it is.” Xi, however, seemed more cautious and said: “We both have the ability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good, and to ensure that AI development is always under human control and serves people’s well-being.” »
further reading
Trump Hosts Billionaires at AI Luncheon: Zuckerberg, Amodei and Huang Among Those Attendees (Forbes)
Bill Gates says AI safety concerns are ‘not a hoax,’ contradicting Trump (Forbes)
Trump vows to launch ‘AI Force’ to safeguard US dominance (Forbes)
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