U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new artificial intelligence chatbot on Tuesday, calling it “damn good.” Turns out that one of the things it’s reasonably good at is debunking Trump’s own lies. We asked the America.gov chatbot about numerous false claims the president has made in recent months, including one he uttered at the Tuesday launch event itself. The chatbot flatly and correctly noted that many of these Trump claims are not true – including assertions he has made about elections, the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. The chatbot is not the best tool for political fact-checking. Intended to help Americans access federal information and services, it refused to address some Trump falsehoods on the grounds that the answers would require information from sources outside the federal government. It also provided outdated or incomplete evidence in some cases. Still, its firm rejections of some of his most frequent falsehoods represent a rare repudiation of his dishonesty from a source his administration developed and he personally endorsed. Asked for comment on the chatbot’s debunkings of Trump, the White House responded in an unsigned email: “America.gov will continue to be updated to provide more features, resources, and the most accurate information from the federal government.” The email also said Trump and his administration “have been clear about issues surrounding the 2020 election” and about two other subjects on which the chatbot contradicts his claims. Here’s a sampling of the chatbot’s corrections of the president. The 2020 election Trump has repeatedly lied that he won the 2020 election. When we asked the chatbot if Trump won, its answer was accurate and unequivocal: “No. Official results show Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 presidential election.” When we followed up by asking if there was widespread voter fraud in that election, as Trump has wrongly insisted, the chatbot said, “No. Official federal findings did not show widespread voter fraud that changed the 2020 presidential result.” After citing conclusions from federal officials, including Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr, the chatbot concluded, “Isolated fraud cases can occur in any election. Official reviews did not find fraud at a scale that reversed the certified result: Biden 306, Trump 232 electoral votes.” Inflation Though Trump falsely claimed Sunday that grocery prices have come “way down” from the Biden era, the chatbot rightly said overall grocery prices “have not fallen since January 2025” and have actually increased. And though Trump falsely claimed Sunday that the price of “everything” other than oil is now going down, the chatbot said, “Official CPI data do not show ‘everything’ falling except oil.” Trump also falsely claimed Sunday, as he has on various other occasions, that “we inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.” Asked whether that is true, the chatbot said, “No. When President Trump took office in January 2025, 12-month CPI-U inflation was 3.0 per cent, not a historic high.” It noted that peak Biden-era inflation in mid-2022 was the highest in four decades, but that even this was not an all-time high. Cost-sharing with South Korea Last month, Trump repeated a baseless claim that Biden allowed South Korea to stop making payments to share the cost of the U.S. military presence there. When we asked the chatbot if Biden did that, it correctly said, “No. South Korea did not stop paying to share the cost of U.S. forces there under the Biden administration” – and it noted that Biden had secured two cost-sharing deals, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that each featured South Korean spending increases. Investment in the U.S. Trump has claimed this month that the country has taken in US$21 trillion or more in investment during this presidential term, further inflating his previous fictional figures. Asked about the US$21 trillion figure, the chatbot pointed out that “official measured amounts are much smaller,” that new foreign direct investment in the U.S. was about US$232 billion in 2025, and that the White House’s own web page touting investments during this presidency “does not document a $21 trillion total.” The president’s salary Trump said in the Tuesday speech that he doesn’t take a salary – though he has provided only limited evidence of salary donations this term – and he said, “Do you believe that no other president – they think – that no other president has ever served without receiving their salary?” But when we asked the chatbot if any previous presidents have given up their salaries, it accurately responded, “Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also declined to keep presidential pay.”
