President Donald Trump is leaning heavily upon Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to help shape decisions about his presidency and legacy — and close advisers are alarmed are alarmed by how much weight he's giving it, according to a new Time magazine interview and reporting.
The fixation traces back to a clandestine December 2025 Oval Office meeting, when Musk returned to Trump's orbit and the two men spent hours with Trump peppering Grok with questions.
At one point, Trump asked the chatbot "how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro." Grok responded that Maduro was "a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator" and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall, according to an official present. The following month, Trump ordered a mission to seize Maduro, and celebrations broke out in the streets.
According to Time, officials say Trump came away convinced the chatbot was "ingenious."
That episode has fed two anxieties inside the administration, Time reported: fear that AI hype is propping up the stock market, and fear that China could seize a decisive edge if it out-builds the U.S. on AI infrastructure — a worry reinforced by conversations with executives like Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
Trump has sided with unrestrained build-out, brushing off a growing data center backlash in communities nationwide despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
"The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 31. "If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign."
Days later, aides showed Trump polling from his most influential pollster, Tony Fabrizio, revealing widespread public anxiety about AI-driven job losses, rising costs and technology slipping out of human control — anxiety that has Republicans facing November voters eager to distance themselves.
One aide told Time that Trump "just really just didn't seem to care," because his mind was already made up based on his use of Grok.
"He's used to generating outrage and then watching everyone eventually crawl back to him. It's hard to convince him to do anything at this point," they told Time.