According to Time, in December 2025 Donald Trump invited Elon Musk to a private meeting in the Oval Office and spent hours asking questions of Musk’s Grok artificial-intelligence chatbot about his presidency, political legacy, and other matters including foreign-policy scenarios.
A U.S. official who attended the meeting told Time that by that point the United States had already launched missile strikes against Venezuelan ships that Washington said were smuggling drugs into the United States. At the meeting, Trump reportedly asked Grok how Venezuelans might respond if the United States were to capture Nicolás Maduro.
Time quotes the official as saying that the chatbot replied Maduro was a repressive and highly unpopular dictator, and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his fall. About a month after the meeting, Trump ordered a U.S. operation aimed at capturing Maduro; following the Venezuelan leader’s removal, street celebrations did in fact take place.
The episode, Time reports, made a strong impression on Trump. U.S. officials said the president subsequently regarded the Grok chatbot as “brilliant.”
Why this matters
The report is notable because it describes an instance in which a sitting U.S. president sought input from a privately developed AI chatbot on the possible domestic reactions in another country to a sensitive military or law-enforcement operation. The account highlights questions about the role of artificial intelligence in high-level decision-making and raises ethical, legal, and security considerations when leaders consult AI systems about real-world operations.
The details above are drawn from Time’s reporting and from the account of an official who attended the Oval Office meeting.
