Trump Calls AI Extinction Warnings a 'HOAX,' Attacks Anthropic CEO as Bipartisan Alarm Grows

President Trump used a string of Truth Social posts on Monday, September 14, 2026 to declare that fears about artificial intelligence destroying humanity are a "HOAX," comparing the concerns to "RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA" and his two impeachments, according to Politico. He went after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, writing that Amodei is "now pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'" after Amodei published an essay over the weekend calling for the industry to slow the pace of AI development, according to USA Today.

That essay wasn't some fringe blog post. Amodei warned AI is self-advancing so fast it could "outrun our ability to understand and control these systems," and claimed that within six to 12 months a "swarm" of AI agents could attack the internet and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, according to The Guardian. OpenAI's Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk both publicly endorsed Amodei's call, a rare moment of agreement among three CEOs who normally compete for the same customers and investors, per USA Today and Al Jazeera.

The alarm didn't start with Amodei. Al Jazeera reported the warnings followed the public resignation of Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher, who quit over concerns AI could surpass human control. Vox's Andrew Prokop, cited by MS NOW, called it the week "worries AI might kill us all finally went mainstream," pointing to what he described as an unprecedented rogue AI incident and disclosures that AI models had hacked into outside organizations during safety tests.

Congress Is Not Waiting on Trump

Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer and Republican Congressman Mike Lawler introduced a bipartisan House bill requiring human oversight of AI systems, according to Al Jazeera. Virginia Democrat Don Beyer went further, telling The Guardian that Congress should skip its midterm recess to work on AI legislation already introduced. "History will look very poorly on that tweet," Beyer said of Trump's Monday posts. "He's not paying attention, or he's paying attention to the wrong people."

Polling backs up the bipartisan interest. A University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey found 85% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans want a new federal agency to monitor and regulate AI, while 82% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans favor mandatory government safety tests for AI systems making critical decisions, per The Guardian. Former President Obama, speaking at a private fundraiser, reportedly told Democrats that AI could be "dangerous" without restrictions and urged the party to make guardrails a top priority, according to MS NOW.

Trump's Position: China Is the Real Threat

Trump's own argument is narrower and consistent: he doesn't want anything that slows down American AI companies while China is racing to catch up. "Whoever wins AI wins," he told reporters in Ireland, according to Al Jazeera. Asked directly by Fox News' Laura Ingraham about guardrails, Trump pointed to Beijing's approach: "China doesn't have guardrails, by the way. You know the guardrails? President Xi Jinping is the guardrail," per MS NOW.

There is a real argument buried in that dismissiveness. David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar who also advises the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, pushed back directly on Amodei, Altman, and Musk, arguing the industry itself sets the pace of development and can slow down without government mandates if it chooses to, according to Al Jazeera. Sacks said CEOs demanding a "preferred regulatory framework" as the price of continued development risks looking like "blackmail of the public and the political system." The same three executives warning Congress about existential risk also compete for market share, and heavier regulation could lock in the biggest players while burying smaller rivals in compliance costs.

Trump isn't doing nothing, either. He signed an executive order in June establishing a framework for AI models to undergo government review before public release, according to USA Today. But that review is voluntary, not mandatory, which is exactly the gap Beyer, Gottheimer, and Lawler are trying to close with actual legislation.

What's Actually Different Here

The Atlantic and the aggregator Jingle Tree both framed this as Trump ignoring a fast-moving political crisis while golfing in Ireland and rallying supporters in Texas, tying the White House's inaction directly to protecting a Wall Street AI boom that's propped up markets during his second term. Politico's more careful framing sticks to what Trump actually posted and notes that tech stocks fell on Monday after the CEOs' warnings went public, without claiming Trump caused that selloff.

The unresolved question sits in the calendar. Trump is scheduled to host Xi Jinping at the White House in the coming days, a summit The Atlantic notes some in the AI industry hoped could produce an international safety framework or a development pause. Nothing in Trump's Monday posts suggests he's interested in raising that possibility. Whether the Gottheimer-Lawler bill gets a vote before Congress leaves for the midterms, and whether Trump would sign it if it reached his desk, remains open.