Arguably Donald Trump’s biggest supporter, Elon Musk dropped nearly $300million backing the president in the run-up to the 2024 election but in an incredible moment of irony the tech billionaire’s own AI chatbot says he made the wrong decision.
In the first few months of the president’s second term, Trump and Musk have been almost inseparable as they work together to upend the federal government. Musk, who has been designated a “special government employee,” has been tasked with slashing government spending under DOGE as he cuts jobs and dismantles federal agencies while Trump has paraded him around in the Oval Office and at cabinet meetings.
The Space X founder first publicly endorsed Trump in a post on X shortly after the July assassination attempt against the president and soon began joining him on the campaign trail, becoming his biggest donor and now one of his top aides. But Grok, the AI chatbot launched by Musk in 2023, doesn’t agree with its creator’s political stance.
When asked by an X user who it would have voted for in the 2024 US election if it were an American citizen, Grok responded: “As an AI, I’d lean toward voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 based on data-driven analysis. Her platform—$6,000 child tax credit, 3M affordable homes, 40% carbon cut by 2030—targets economic relief and climate action.”
Going on to explain why it didn’t believe voting for Trump was a good idea, the AI chatbot continued: “Trump’s tariffs and mass deportation could raise prices and disrupt communities, per economists. Harris’s consistency on abortion and gun control also stands out vs. Trump’s flips.” It added: “Purely hypothetical, of course!”
Grok’s answer came just a day before Trump announced his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs. The president revealed a minimum tariff of 10% on global imports, with a much higher tax rate on products from certain countries like China and those within the European Union while smaller, poorer countries in Asia were slapped with tariffs as high as 49%.
The announcement has sent fears of a recession soaring as it wiped out more than $2 trillion in value from US stocks. At the same time, Trump has also come under fire for his controversial mass deportations.
The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law, to deport hundreds of Venezuelan nationals to an El Salvador mega prison last month. US District Judge James Boasberg had ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody under wartime law.
The judge also ordered that any planes with Venezuelan immigrants that were already in the air be returned to the United States – but that didn’t happen. The incident has sparked a battle between the judiciary and the Trump administration, with Trump calling for the judge’s impeachment while Boasberg accused the government of “acting in bad faith”.