When the Pentagon launched a campaign against Anthropic for not bending the knee earlier this year, it seemed like President Donald Trump was fully on board. But something changed this week, as the world watched Trump standing next to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Trump seems to genuinely like Amodei, at least out in public. The question is why. Let us present one theory for what’s behind this shift: Trump thinks Amodei is the perfect nerd for selling AI. Straight out of central casting, as Trump might say.
Back in February, Trump wrote on Truth Social about all the “left wing nut jobs” at Anthropic, echoing the Pentagon’s claims that the company wasn’t allowing the Department of Defense to use its models as it liked. Anthropic had put safeguards in place that banned its models from being used for autonomous weapons and spying on Americans, something viewed as treasonous by guys like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael.
But something has seemed to happen only recently. Taking questions from reporters outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump seemed downright chummy with Amodei. During an interview with Time magazine published Thursday, Trump said that earlier this week he had “a dinner with Dario for two and a half hours.”
Trump told Time, “I spoke to him about his views, and they’re much different, I think, than what is portrayed in the media,” before talking about how much he liked Amodei’s wife, Cami Clark, and then going on a weird tangent about the Presidents Cup golf tournament. Finally getting back on topic, Trump referred to Amodei as a “very smart guy,” who is “maybe different than I thought, a little bit. Really a little bit different. But no, he understands.”
What does Amodei understand? That part is unclear. But something important has changed.
Trump interprets the entire world through popular visual media like TV and movies. There is nothing more important to him. Everyone in his administration needs to look the part. And if you ask us, it’s because Trump thinks Amodei is the best representation of the late 20th-century nerd.
In fact, you don’t need to look any further than the 1984 comedy Revenge of the Nerds. I mean, look at this side by side with Amodei and the lead actor in that film, Robert Carradine, who plays Lewis Skolnick.
Granted, Amodei doesn’t have a pocket protector. And his glasses are slightly more 1960s art nerd than 1980s tech nerd. But you can still see it. And it’s important to compare Amodei to the other nerds who were present for the big summit of tech oligarchs at the White House on Tuesday.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has done his best to rehab his image from robotic autism-spectrum nerd to surfing-MMA-bro nerd. He no longer has the bowl cut that actor Jeremy Strong sports in the upcoming movie about Facebook, The Social Reckoning. Sam Altman also has a more 2010s-hipster-bro vibe than Amodei, but that may have much to do with his lack of glasses. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is famous for wearing leather jackets, something Elon Musk tries on from time to time, like during a recent appearance on Chinese state TV, where the Tesla CEO spoke glowingly of Xi Jinping.
The leather jacket is what the cool guys in movies and TV from the 1950s through the 1990s wore—the golden age of America, according to Trump. As best we can tell, Dario Amodei has never worn a leather jacket out in public. And Trump’s brain is so broken that he believes looking the part is half the battle in appointing the right people. The other half is complete blind obedience to his fascist agenda.
Trump has been ragging on the appearance of Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate, seemingly because, to Trump, he doesn’t look like a senator. Paxton is completely obedient to Trump, though a leaked recording shows the AG understands Trump’s support is hurting him with Texas voters. The thing Paxton doesn’t have, as far as Trump is concerned, is the look of a distinguished politician. That may have as much to do with Paxton’s face, which often resembles a slug that’s been drenched in salt.
Trump is incredibly shallow. During a planned military parade in 2018, Trump reportedly didn’t want to have wounded vets marching. He also hates when his underlings have a beard, according to reporting from his first term, though he’s broken that rule during his second term with Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Both men are embarrassingly complimentary, however, and when it comes to Vance, he seems to have been persuaded by the vice president’s powerful allies in the tech and VC worlds. Appearances are everything to this carnival barker of a president. And that may be why Trump has been slow to endorse his own vice president when asked about 2028. Perhaps Marco Rubio looks more presidential.
Trump is a fascist who continues to be a threat to the safety and security of the United States, but he’s an entertainer by trade. It’s everything to him. That’s why he spends so much time watching TV and critiquing the most minor ways in which Fox News may displease him. To say nothing of the ways that mainstream cable TV networks like CNN make him unhappy. Trump even banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House, a move that’s being litigated as he continues to defy court orders that state he can’t keep them from the press pool.
Why did Trump pull a 180 on Dario Amodei? It’s entirely possible that he offered Trump something in exchange for a softer touch. But it’s just as likely that after finally meeting him, Trump believes he found the nerd who could be the camera-ready face of AI.
