3 days ago
I asked Truth Social AI to fact-check Trump
This newsletter, Translating Politics, was created to help readers sift through Donald Trump's always chaotic and often deceitful rhetoric during his second term as president.
Today, we have a little high-tech help for that task, thanks to a new AI chatbot that started operating last week on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social.
I used this tool, known as Truth Social AI, to fact-check posts Trump made this week on Truth Social. But first, let's ask our chatbot assistant if Trump has a history of lying.
'Yes,' Truth Social AI responded, 'Multiple major fact-checking organizations and news outlets have documented a sustained pattern of false or misleading public statements by Donald Trump over many years, including during campaigns, his presidency, and post-presidency.'
Now let's turn to Trump's claims on Truth Social, where he posted on Aug. 11 that 'Tariffs are making our country strong and rich!!!'
Truth Social AI didn't agree, telling me 'Broad tariffs do not make a country 'strong and rich' in the aggregate; they redistribute costs and benefits—raising revenue and protecting some industries while increasing prices, reducing real wages, and risking slower growth over time, according to economic analyses and recent data on the new U.S. tariffs.'
Trump on Aug. 11 posted that he was 'nominating highly respected economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.' Antoni would replace the last BLS commissioner, who Trump fired on Aug. 1 for issuing an accurate report on job growth.
Truth Social AI isn't as impressed with Antoni as Trump, calling him 'a partisan policy economist known for media commentary and work at the Heritage Foundation, but he is not widely recognized in academia as a highly cited or field‑leading economist.'
Trump also posted on Aug. 11 that 'the murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia,' while trying to justify his absurd mobilization of the National Guard to patrol in our nation's capital.
Truth Social is working with Perplexity, an AI search engine, which has said Trump's website is a customer and has control over issues like which information sources get cited.
Truth Social AI told me, based on available data, that Washington's murder rate would be lower than Bogotá's, not higher. The chatbot also knocked down Trump's false claim that crime is on the rise in Washington, noting that 'the Metropolitan Police Department is reporting a roughly 26% decrease in violent crime so far in 2025.'
So for now, you can get accurate information from Truth Social, but not the website's largest stockholder.
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