I have voted for Donald Trump three times. I have supported most of his policies and backed that support with more than 700 podcasts and articles published across multiple platforms. I try to question him when the facts demand it and celebrate the wins when they arrive. That is why last weekend’s “AI hoax” comments landed so hard.

For the first time, I found myself thinking something I never expected: the president is out of touch with how ordinary Americans actually feel. At last week’s Republican midterm convention he reveled in talk of the greatest economy in American history. I kept asking myself what numbers he was looking at. Core inflation remains sticky and could heat up fast with diesel at record levels. National average gas prices sit well above $4 a gallon. The 2026 fiscal year ends September 30, and the country has already piled up a deficit approaching $2 trillion with September still uncounted. The national debt has crossed $40 trillion.

A convention bounce of a couple of points does not change the larger picture. His approval remains in the mid-30s, the same neighborhood it occupied in the grim weeks after January 6, 2021. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, and the prospect of Artificial Super Intelligence have Americans on edge. You can hear it in the protests over data centers and the growing revolt against Flock Safety’s network of AI-powered cameras. Those concerns cut across party lines. They should.

I agree with Trump on the core strategic point: AI is the new arms race and the United States cannot afford to lose it to China. The question: At what cost? In July 2025 Kathleen Goble and I published The Fight For The Future of Humanity: Making the Case for a 28th Amendment. Neither of us are tech people but like you we had questions. We simply did the research, and tried to translate the experts’ forecasts into language regular citizens could use. We made a deliberate choice, even though both of us are conservative, to keep politics out of the book. AI does not need another tribal fight. The conversation should include everyone, and it could have until “a hoax” comment was made.

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People worry about their jobs. They worry about the electricity and water these facilities devour. They worry about always-on surveillance. They want answers, not a lecture that their fears are fake. Calling the whole thing a “hoax” does not dismiss the technology; it dismisses the people living with its consequences. The bigger political mistake was that the comment handed Democrats an opening they walked through immediately.

Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats did not waste time. They framed themselves as the adults willing to listen. Polls show Americans split roughly 50-50 on whether AI will be a net good. Ask about societal risk and the number who are worried jumps toward 60 percent. That is not a left-right split. It is a human split. Turning AI into another culture-war football is a losing proposition for anyone who actually wants the United States to win the race without wrecking the society that is supposed to benefit from the victory.

Trump has done real work to keep America in the lead in this technology explosion. What has been missing is empathy. The fears are not theoretical. Neighborhoods fighting data-centers, towns bagging Flock cameras, workers watching software eat entry-level tasks—these are not talking points. They are daily life.

Jason Ho wrote the foreword to our book. He is an AI developer with hundreds of semiconductor patents, key work on the F-35 jet fighter avionics, and a long career building the hardware that makes this technology possible. After reading our manuscript he wrote: “We cannot ignore the issues raised by this book. This is not a choice but our survival guide in the age of AI.” He is not a pundit. He is an insider who has seen the trajectory. So have Jacob Coxon, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Leopold Aschenbrenner, and others who have spent years inside the labs.

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America is still treating frontier AI like the Wild West. That is reckless for a technology that is already reshaping the 21st century. A hoax? That word may become the phrase Democrats play on a loop through November. Trump could have said something simple and true: “I know a lot of people are concerned, and there is reason to be. My administration will take every precaution, listen to the public, and listen to the experts. We will win this race, but not at the expense of the future of society.” That answer would have kept AI from becoming just another partisan weapon. “Hoax” did the opposite.

The midterms are seven weeks away. Voters already feel squeezed at the pump and the grocery store. They watch data centers rise while their electric bills climb. They see cameras on every corner and algorithms deciding what they see, what they earn, and who gets watched. They do not need to be told those feelings are a conspiracy. They need to be told that someone in power hears them. AI should never have been political. For one careless weekend it became political. The people who live with the consequences will decide whether that was a small mistake or the last one that mattered.

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