Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday accused Democratic senators of orchestrating a politically timed panic over artificial intelligence.
Mr. Blanche made the remarks during a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden and said the strategy amounts to naked election manipulation that should not affect the nation’s AI policy.
He said that lawmakers who had been “eerily silent for months and months and months” on the issue suddenly rushed to microphones just two months before the midterm elections.
“This should not be breaking news that this AI issue suddenly come up two months before an election is being held,” he said. “The president calls it a hoax. That the way this has come around today and not three months ago.”
The attorney general said he thinks the Democrats’ timing is suspicious and an effort to “influence the midterms,” and that AI policy should be free of political influence.
“That shouldn’t be what drives the decisions that we’re making around AI,” he said.
For example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, this week demanded a Senate briefing by administration officials on their plans to curb AI.
“If Trump does not act, Congress must,” Mr. Schumer said.
The Trump administration on Monday pushed back against calls to heavily regulate artificial intelligence — including appeals from former President Barack Obama — arguing that alarming warnings from industry leaders and Democrats of potential catastrophe are a coordinated election-year ploy.
President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance questioned the timing and coordination of a series of warnings from AI leaders about the threat to humanity they say will arise unless the government restrains the advancement of artificial intelligence.
Mr. Trump pushed back hard against the sudden demands for regulation, calling the AI pile-on “no different” from the false allegations that he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, “and all the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.”
Mr. Vance said the sudden move by AI tech companies “begging” for government regulation “feels a little bit to me like a Trojan horse.”
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