Trump Loves a Populist Crusade. Why Does He Hate This One?

The Surge Let’s examine why the president is such an ardent defender of one of the nation’s least-loved industries. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images, Alexander Sikov/Getty Images, Alexander Sinn/Unsplash, and Adobe Stock. The Surge is your weekly political sanity check: What matters, what might, and what’s just political theater. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, Slate’s politics newsletter that welcomes Mitch McConnell back to the Senate. Is Lindsey Graham next? If there was but one thing that happened this week, it was politics. New Hampshire, sulky and brooding, thinks it’s too “cool” to participate in a Democratic-wave election. Did Pete Hegseth almost get impeached this week? A Texas Republican candidate caused a proper foofaraw after getting deeply upset by a photo of brown people enjoying a football game. And please, we are still welcoming feedback on the changes around this newsletter. Let us know. But first: How much are these killer robots paying Donald Trump to like them? (Actually, that’s probably discoverable in public filings …) What matters now: Why can’t Donald Trump just hate artificial intelligence like everyone else? Last week’s calls from inside the house that A.I. companies are at risk of losing control of their monsters and killing everyone—true or not!—have continued to sweep the news. Congress rolled up its sleeves and got to work devising plans for slow-moving task forces that may or may not ever materialize, before leaving D.C. until November. The salience of A.I. concerns has skyrocketed overnight. Polls show deep concerns among the electorate about A.I. advances. This isn’t going to abate as an issue over time, either. With each passing day, A.I. will become a bigger and bigger part of everyone’s lives. Soon, you won’t be able to spit without hitting an A.I. agent coming at you with a knife. (Or, well, showing you a helpful recipe using ingredients you have sitting around the house.) In short, we’ve never seen a bigger layup issue for populists, left and right, heading down the stretch of an election season. Which makes it all the stranger that the guy who ushered in the new populist era, Donald Trump, doesn’t have it in him to say a cross word about these machines at all. He’ll only chastise those who do. “I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax—That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!” He posted this week. “This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam.” In a separate screed regarding the need to regulate A.I., Trump posted that the “only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” He called the A.I. warnings a “SICK conspiracy” and warned “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” All of this follows a late-August post responding to the data center backlash when Trump chastised voters for their concerns. “If we kill the Golden Goose,” he wrote then, “you will only have yourselves to blame.” Why can’t Trump just ride the wave here, when he’s usually so good at co-opting shrieking public panics? A few thoughts come to mind. You could say he’s genuinely concerned about being outmaneuvered by China on A.I. and that this is informed by classified briefings he gets on the matter. But he just doodles pictures of hamburgers during those. More important to him is that the tech people are nice to him, always bringing him gifts and purchasing protection by donating to his political action committees. What’s also important to him is that A.I. buildout has been responsible for most, if not all, of the GDP growth under his administration. The “Golden Goose,” then, is the Trump economy’s paper gain. It’s that last part that’s so critical given Trump’s psychology: He views the attack on the engine of growth he presides over as an attack on him. Comparing the A.I. backlash to the “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX” is as close to a tell as there is. Worth keeping an eye on: Really, New Hampshire? You’re going to have a real Senate race this year? There haven’t been many bad polls for Democrats across the board since Labor Day, as pollsters shift to surveys of likely voters instead of registered voters and capture the Democratic-enthusiasm edge. (Required note of caution: Sometimes polls are wrong as Hell!) But there’s one race that’s standing out, much as the likeness of an old man’s face once did on Cannon Mountain. Some recent surveys show Democrat Chris Pappas and Republican John Sununu, who served in the Senate previously, locked in a tight contest in New Hampshire’s Senate race. And this week, the Cook Political Report shifted its race rating to “toss-up.” Politics without the panic Get the Surge in your inbox. What’s going on here? Sure, New Hampshire’s not the bluest state in history, but it should be comfortably blue enough for a Democrat to win in this environment. And Pappas, a sitting congressman, should be a perfectly acceptable head of hair to complete the task. The most obvious issue is Pappas’ opponent’s last name. Sununus are one of New Hampshire’s royal families, and John’s brother, Chris, is a popular former governor. Republicans have also outspent Democrats in the race as they attempt something of a sneak attack, with plenty more coming in ad reservations this fall. Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, meanwhile, is cruising to reelection, and could carry Sununu along with her. We thiiiink this will sort itself out based on fundamentals, and that Republicans are mostly trying to get Democrats to spend money to defend it? But there are always anomalies in even would-be wave years, and voters might think the Senate candidate is his brother is the stuff from which anomalies are made. It’s not a situation that Democrats can ignore anymore, at least. What smells like bait: As if there’s any way Gavin Newsom doesn’t run for president. California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper while fly-fishing (?) that he would not run for president if Kamala Harris ran. He wasn’t even backed into this corner. This was just two of the fellas out there fishing, and Newsom said it with barely any prompt. “Why would I?” Newsom said, after Tapper responded with a huh? “I wouldn’t do that to her, I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time.” What that tells us is that he must believe, or know, that Harris won’t run. Because there’s no way that Newsom is not running for president. No way! He also told Tapper that he would have to check to make sure a run would be OK with his family, but they all say that—the family is always reportedly enthused (unseen, off-camera). Another possibility is that Newsom will do a sneaky li’l thing like quick-announcing his candidacy before she has a chance to announce hers. Because he’s clearly thought about how to beat her. When Tapper said that the argument against Harris would be that she’s had her shot, and lost, Newsom didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah,” Newsom said, “And I mean, that would be the approach to the campaign, certainly. That would be the case we’d make. A pretty good one, actually. That’s objectively true.” Watch out for these sneaky Californians, folks. For an extra section of lightning-round political thoughts from Jim, sign up to get the Surge in your inbox. Artificial Intelligence Democrats Donald Trump Elections The Surge New Hampshire 2026 Midterms