As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. It sounds like America’s fascist, senile president consulted AI before making a major decision last year. And the news leaves us with many terrifying questions.
President Donald Trump reportedly sought the counsel of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok about the mission to kidnap Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro well before he actually went through with it.
Trump announced the capture of Maduro on Jan. 3, 2026, but it turns out he asked Grok about the plan in Dec. 2025, according to Time. It all happened during a secret meeting with the SpaceX billionaire at the White House:
In December 2025, Elon Musk returned to the Oval Office for a clandestine meeting. Trump spent hours asking Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, questions about his presidency and legacy, according to an official present. At the time, Trump was ordering missile strikes against Venezuelan boats he alleged were smuggling drugs into the U.S. He asked Grok how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro, the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking Grok was ingenious.
Maduro is now sitting in a New York jail awaiting trial on charges for drug trafficking. Whatever you think of Maduro, Trump’s decision to ask AI about the raid is a bad sign for America. The president famously doesn’t use a computer, always appearing like some kind of confused primate on the rare occasion that one is placed in front of him.
It makes sense that Trump would start with questions about himself and his own legacy. AI chatbots are famously sycophantic and were essentially built to hit all the pleasure centers of a narcissist’s brain. But if Trump is really consulting AI chatbots before making big decisions, like kidnapping the leaders of foreign governments, that presents an entirely new dimension to his delusional way of thinking.
When Trump’s human sycophants tell him how amazing he is, Trump is clearly filled with delight. But if he’s being told by ostensibly smart people that AI knows all, he can point to the responses he gets from AI as being superhuman. This is the guy who demanded that artificial intelligence be renamed to “super intelligence,” arguing that artificial implies fakery.
When you start to imagine what other questions Trump could be asking Grok, or any other chatbot, the world of horrifying possibilities seems limitless. Maybe he’s asking about whether to invade Canada or when to step up his bombing campaign in Iran. The Pentagon just sent 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, and Trump has reportedly told aides he’ll continue bombing Iran in late November, after the midterms.
It’s unclear at this point if Trump has Grok on his phone or if he had someone else behind the keyboard typing questions, as he often does. Natalie Harp, his 35-year-old assistant, is often the one publishing his screeds to Truth Social. But what does Trump need Harp for if AI can write up his bizarre tweets?
It’s easy to imagine other scenarios where President Trump could be manipulated through chatbots. We’ve already seen how Elon Musk has changed Grok to more closely align with his far-right worldview. After some tinkering by Musk, Grok started spouting conspiracy theories about white farmers in South Africa and declared itself MechaHitler while advocating for a new Holocaust. There was also the time Grok said Musk was more fit than LeBron James and smarter than Albert Einstein.
Our one saving grace may be Trump’s realization that someone could be reading his thoughts on the other side of the chatbot. Trump famously doesn’t use email because it creates a paper trail. The New York Times claimed Trump not only tried to flush paper records down the toilet, but a former assistant also claimed he literally ate paper to destroy any evidence. It’s much harder to eat the evidence created when you query an AI chatbot. But maybe the president could try to eat an entire data center. It’s worth trying, Mr. President.
