President Donald Trump often talks during rallies with supporters about the fake news trying to twist the truth or report only a small sliver of the facts along with disinformation–in other words, to cause problems for Republicans and conservatives. On Thursday, he had a reason to push back on just the latest example of the legacy media revving up a whole lot of nothing.
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It happened during the afternoon, when Trump was taking part in another session of signing a stack of executive orders and actions in the Oval Office.
Executive Order-palooza:
NEW: Trump Signs EO to Establish Promising, New Presidential Advisory Commission on Science, Tech
BREAKING: Bevelyn Beatty Williams, 22 Other Pro-Life Activists Pardoned in Thursday EO Signing
You can find even more of them here.
One of those EOs today involved forging the future direction of AI in the United States, and part of the policy appears to be putting together government-private sector projects like Stargate, with one of OpenAI co-founders, CEO Sam Altman. Elon Musk, once upon a time, was`the other co-founder.
A pool reporter asked Pres. Trump about the recent war of words Wednesday between the X and Tesla owner, who is heading up the administration’s DOGE entity, and Altman about OpenAI and the other tech companies, and the project. For context, here’s a little background:
Trump announced the Stargate AI project at a press conference Tuesday alongside Altman, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. But Musk quickly clashed with Altman on social media and questioned the funding for the project.
Musk, an adviser to Trump, on Wednesday claimed “they don’t actually have the money” and later said, “SoftBank has well under $10B secured.”
Altman initially responded with praise for Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with him in 2015 but left the company in 2018 over concerns about the future of the AI firm. But Altman was more direct later.
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Altman shot back in an X post tagging Musk:
“Wrong, as you surely know. want to come visit the first site already under way? this is great for the country. i realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope you’ll mostly put [the U.S.] first.”
On Thursday, the media tried to twist this disagreement between two other adults into a problem for Trump. Here’s how that began:
The exchange in the post reads:
REPORTER: “After you made the Stargate announcement, Elon Musk tweeted that they don’t have the money, is that true?”
TRUMP: “I don’t know. They’re putting up the money, the government isn’t. They’re very rich people. I hope they do. Elon doesn’t like one of those people.”
Trump wasn’t finished, though. He easily waved away this sad attempt to drive a wedge between the two men:
This was the best line, at the end, when the 47th president modestly commented that no one’s perfect–not even him:
“I have certain hatreds for people too.”
Isn’t that how it is? That’s just a part of human nature that anyone can relate to.
Here’s a reaction from an X user who works in the tech sector on the new EO’s stated intentions:
Coldebella wrote:
It’s a tech double header: President Trump also signed an AI EO today. It does three things: 1. It states that the policy of the US is now “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”
2. It gives @davidsacks47 and other sr government officials 6 months to develop an action plan to achieve that policy, so watch this space. 3. It orders all actions taken under Biden’s AI EO to be suspended, revised, or rescinded if they’re inconsistent with the new AI policy.
It’s a clean break from the Biden EO’s frontier model oversight & compliance regime, and it provides US companies a golden opportunity to weigh in on how US AI regulation should look.
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Since the topic of AI is a hot one these days I’ll keep an eye on this situation, and follow-up on new developments about the order’s roll-out process.
