President Donald Trump stepped into a crowded room in Washington on Tuesday for what was supposed to be a government technology launch. The occasion was the unveiling of America.gov, a new federally backed artificial intelligence chatbot designed to help ordinary Americans make their way through the complex machinery of the federal government — renewing passports, applying for loans, searching for health coverage, or simply trying to figure out which agency handles which problem. It was the kind of event that most presidents would use to talk about efficiency, modernization, and the public good. But within minutes, it became another chapter in Trump’s long-running confrontation with the media. The president turned to a subject he has returned to many times: renaming artificial intelligence. He insisted that “artificial intelligence” should now be called “super intelligence,” or simply SI, because there was nothing artificial about it. He claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had visited the White House the previous week, loved the idea. “This kind of innovation in government is only a preview of what is possible with super intelligence, or SI. And that’s the official name in the United States. I’ll be signing a very powerful executive order,” Trump told the audience. Then he added: “I spoke to President Xi. He loves it.” It was a moment that captured his habit of elevating his own inventions over established terms. But he was not finished. With the press seated in front of him, he pivoted from technology to journalism, equating “artificial” with “fake” and announcing a new nickname for the media. “Artificial intelligence is like the news. Fake news. I’m going to call them artificial news,” he said. Aides had likely hoped the event would focus on the chatbot itself, but the president’s instinct to attack the media upstaged everything else. In one sentence, he promoted his new linguistic cause, dismissed the coverage of his administration, and handed his supporters another reason to distrust the press.
Tuesday’s announcement was not an isolated moment. It fit a pattern of Trump trying to rename the world around him so that it reflects his preferences and carries his signature. He has already directed federal agencies to stop referring to the Gulf of Mexico and instead call those waters the “Gulf of America.” He has similarly ordered that Lake Ontario be called “Lake America” in official government references, a move that puzzled residents and amused geographers. Later that afternoon, he followed through on the AI idea, signing an executive order instructing federal communications to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence” and the acronym AI with SI. The order has no obvious power over the way technology companies, universities, journalists, or ordinary Americans actually speak. Just as the Gulf of America has not changed the vocabulary of fishermen, mapmakers, or the people who live near the water, the new language is unlikely to take root in Silicon Valley boardrooms or kitchen-table conversations. Americans largely shrugged when the Gulf was renamed, and most will never read the executive order or notice the new phrase buried in government press releases. But for Trump, these gestures matter deeply. They are ways of leaving a mark, however superficial, on institutions and concepts that might otherwise ignore him. He understands that many of his supporters feel dismissed by experts and elites, and renaming things gives them the sense that the president is taking back power from people who have looked down on them. The fact that the change is mostly symbolic does not bother him; symbols have always been at the center of his political appeal. And by linking “artificial” with “fake,” he connected the technology story to his oldest grievance, the one about the press, which he has used since his first campaign to explain away negative coverage and rally his base.
The timing of his attack on the press was significant, because it came during a week in which the White House had been forced to retreat on a major press-access decision. The administration had tried to ban CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House press pool, an extraordinary step that made it harder for those outlets to cover the president and gave him more control over the daily images and questions coming from the briefing room. Reporters from those organizations were denied entry, their credentials were confiscated, and the Secret Service blocked them from the grounds where they would normally work. Several news organizations banded together and filed a lawsuit, and a federal judge intervened. The judge overturned the administration’s ban and ordered the Secret Service to return the press badges that had been stripped from the reporters. The White House reluctantly allowed the outlets back. But there was an important catch: CNN was initially restored to the White House but was still excluded from the rotating television pool, the small group of reporters and cameras whose coverage is shared by all major networks. That distinction may have seemed like a technicality, but it meant the ban had not fully ended; it was a way of punishing the network while technically following the court’s order. After further pressure, the White House backed down on that as well, and by the weekend, journalists from CNN, Politico, and MSNBC were readmitted to the press rotation. The lawsuit remains ongoing, and legal observers expect it will likely end in another defeat for the administration. For a president who hates losing almost as much as he hates negative coverage, the episode was a double blow: he had been caught targeting his critics, and he had been forced to let them back in. His “artificial news” remark was, in part, a defiant way of pretending the loss did not matter.
Trump has never needed a formal reason to attack the press. The conflict has followed him from his first campaign through the White House and into the present, and it has only grown sharper with time. Earlier this month, as he defended the ban, he argued that the excluded outlets “purposely write negative news” and do so because they “want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.” He added, “And honestly, we’ve done a fantastic job.” That worldview, in which every critical story is evidence of a partisan conspiracy, has shaped how he deals with reporters. In the Oval Office, he has berated journalists who ask difficult questions, dismissing them with insults or cutting them off. At rallies, the press has been cast as an enemy of the people, and his supporters have often turned to jeer at the reporters seated in the crowd. The ban on CNN, MSNBC, and Politico was a natural extension of that philosophy: if you cannot control what the press writes, you can try to control who gets to watch him. When a judge stood in the way, Trump responded with a characteristic blend of menace and nostalgia. He suggested on Truth Social that he might demolish the White House briefing room and replace it with a swimming pool, noting that a pool had once existed on the site. It was an oddly telling image: a president who views the very room where presidents are supposed to answer questions as something to destroy. He had reacted similarly when a court blocked his attempt to add his name to the Kennedy Center. Rather than accept the decision, he posed for a photograph staring at an image of the Kennedy Center being demolished. These fantasies are not literal policy proposals, but they reveal a genuine frustration. When the courts, the press, or cultural institutions restrict his freedom, his instinct is to imagine wiping them out entirely. The readmission of the news networks may have restored access, but it did nothing to soften his attitude toward the people who cover him.
The political context only makes the president’s latest media battle more telling. His approval ratings have spent months near the lowest levels of his presidency, and they have not shown signs of real recovery. The war against Iran, which was once presented as a necessary and limited action, has become grinding, costly, and deeply unpopular with the American public. The conflict has raised questions about strategy, casualties, and the direction of the country, and it has consumed the attention of voters who are already worried about the economy. Republican leaders, many of whom have been reluctant to break openly with Trump, are increasingly concerned about the coming midterm elections. They have looked at polling and seen the possibility of a historic wave of Democratic victories in November, a result that would strip the president of his majorities in Congress and leave him even more isolated. Trump, sensing the danger, has tried to distance himself from his own party’s difficulties. He has complained that Republican holdouts in Congress are undermining his agenda and damaging the party, blaming the very lawmakers he needs to pass legislation. He has also tried to change the subject, using events like the America.gov rollout to fill the news cycle with his voice and his ideas. But voters are not easily distracted by language. People who are worried about the cost of living, the war abroad, and the stability of their own households are unlikely to be satisfied by an executive order renaming artificial intelligence. And the press, despite all of Trump’s insults, is not the force that will decide the midterms; voters are. The more the president frames the world in terms of enemies and conspiracies, the more he risks looking disconnected from the concerns that actually shape people’s lives. His base may enjoy each new nickname, but the broader public appears to be waiting for something more than performance.
Underneath all the name-calling and rebranding, there was, at the center of Tuesday’s event, a policy idea: America.gov, the government’s promise to make federal services easier to access. The concept is appealing in principle. Anyone who has waited on hold for hours, been transferred from one agency to another, or spent days searching a confusing website can understand the value of a single digital assistant that could help with everything from benefits to passports to healthcare. The administration described it as a one-stop shop where Americans could apply for small business loans, renew documents, or sign up for government assistance without needing to know the difference between one federal department and another. That vision may eventually become real, but the version that exists today is far more modest than the announcement suggested. In its current form, the chatbot functions much like the AI assistants that have already become familiar on commercial websites. It can answer questions, offer guidance, and point users to the right government websites. It cannot yet carry out transactions or complete services in the kind of seamless, simplified interface that the administration promises for the future. It cannot submit a passport renewal, process a loan, or coordinate across agencies on behalf of a citizen. The fully integrated experience is not expected until 2027 at the earliest. Trump, however, was not interested in discussing those limitations. He presented the project as a triumph, wrapped it in the language of super intelligence, and used the platform to deliver another blow to the media. It was, in many ways, a perfect summary of his approach to governance: bold promises, dramatic words, and little patience for complicated details. The phrase “artificial news” may be remembered long after the chatbot’s features are forgotten. But in the final analysis, neither the nickname nor the renaming of AI will change the problems facing the country. The president can call technology super intelligence and call reporters artificial news, but words alone cannot build a government that works, end a war, or rescue a political party from the consequences of its own choices. The true test of his presidency will not be found in the labels he invents, but in the results he delivers to the Americans who are watching.