President Trump declared war on the AI safety panic yesterday, dismissing the industry's apocalyptic warnings as part of a "sick conspiracy" to sabotage America and his legacy, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: Trump is rewriting a complex, yearslong debate over AI's dangers in the partisan grammar that has defined MAGA for a decade — hoaxes, conspiracies, traitors and, at the center of it all, one man.

Yesterday marked a sharp escalation in the administration's long-standing opposition to AI regulation, as Trump recast the safety debate in starkly personal terms.

• Trump explicitly placed AI doomerism in the same bucket as the Russia investigation, climate change and his impeachments — the latest entry in a catalog of "hoaxes" that has also included the Epstein files and the affordability crisis.
• He turned his fire on the AI leaders urging restraint, questioning why CEOs would seek regulations that could cripple their own companies and arguing that any slowdown would squander America's lead over China.

"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," Trump wrote in a barrage of pro-AI Truth Social posts, where he accused Democrats of stoking the panic.

👀 The intrigue: Trump's campaign against AI doomerism then spilled onto the stage of the "All In Summit" in Los Angeles, where Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took a call from the president in the middle of a live interview.

• Addressing thousands of tech executives, investors and founders on speakerphone, Trump dismissed fears of an AI takeover as a "hoax" and assured the crowd that "the robots will not be taking over."

Between the lines: Trump is grafting his own political grievances onto a counter-narrative already taking hold among his Silicon Valley allies: that the AI panic is manufactured.

• David Sacks, Trump's influential AI adviser and "All In" podcaster, has portrayed AI alarmism as the work of a well-funded "Doomer Industrial Complex" that includes former Biden officials.
• As the latest warnings exploded across social media last week, Sacks and his co-hosts suggested the backlash was a coordinated "psyop" tied to election season and the growing threat from open-source AI.

🖼️ The big picture: Critics question how Trump, an 80-year-old populist, became such an evangelist for AI. The answer lies in an AI narrative almost perfectly calibrated to Trump's instincts:

• A race with China that America is currently winning.
• A historic buildout of data centers, chip fabs and power plants — physical monuments to investment and growth.
• Tech titans competing for his ear and influence.
• A booming stock market.
• A futuristic vision of American supremacy built on speed, scale and technological might.
• And now, a familiar foil: an elite "expert" class telling him no.

The bottom line: Trump has been an AI accelerationist from the start.

• What's new is the degree to which he now sees the AI boom as his boom — and the safety revolt as an attempt to deny him his place in history.

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Most agree the AI industry needs oversight, Bradley Olson writes in his debut story as Axios' managing editor of AI and tech coverage.

• The critical barrier: Few really trust the industry or the safety advocates who come from inside the house.

1. Why it matters: Factions in the Trump administration, business executives wary of competitive threats, and advocates for cheaper, more customizable "open" models fear that new regulatory hurdles will give frontier AI companies too much of a head start.

💡 Here are key factors shaping that distrust, which are poised to delay the kind of "all-hands-on-deck" response many wanted:

1. Money: Anthropic stands alone in the history of capitalism. Its employees, up to the CEO, honestly believe its product is so dangerous that there's a chance it could destroy humanity. And yet, as soon as this week, it's expected to file for what many expect will be the biggest IPO of all time.
2. Safety: For years, AI obsessives and technologists have spent vast sums financing research dedicated to AI safety. The problem is that many critics see some of that work as lacking in substance, too focused on the probability of end-of-the-world scenarios.
3. Politics: Top administration officials — including David Sacks, former White House AI adviser and continuing Trump confidant — have repeatedly dismissed the push for regulation and oversight as an attempt at "regulatory capture." A slowdown brokered by the frontier labs could freeze their lead.

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The second-most powerful man at the State Department put the brakes on a U.S. international exhibit featuring a bull statue because he worried it might look like Baal, a devil some associate with satanic child sacrifice, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

• Why it matters: The anecdote illustrates the quirky interests of Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, according to department critics, who say he spends too much time on social media focusing on the unimportant.

🔎 Zoom in: The issue revolves around an international exposition next year in Belgrade, Serbia, where the U.S. plans to feature a statue of a bucking bull at an exhibition celebrating the American West.

• On Aug. 19, at 4:15 p.m., Landau sent an email to staffers about it: "I remain somewhat concerned by the Golden Bull imagery! Did a quick internet search and don't want it to become a distraction. The golden calf from the Bible is often portrayed as a golden bull."
• Providing hyperlinked footnotes and images of golden bull worship, Landau explored the ancient history of Baal as well as the "Modern Cultural Comparisons."

Behind the scenes: The email, which was forwarded to multiple officials, elicited eye rolls and snickers inside the State Department.

• The bull statue was put on hold as State officials spent the past few weeks debating how to make it both interesting and non-satanic.
• "It's just totally weird stuff and it's really indicative of the guy," a State Department official said.

💥 Friction point: Landau has had repeated internal dustups within the Trump administration, sources tell Axios.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voted at the Capitol yesterday for the first time in three months after being hospitalized in June, Axios' Stef W. Kight and Avery Lotz write.

• McConnell arrived in a wheelchair and spoke briefly to reporters, joking that after years of avoiding their questions, he "wasn't sure how many of you would be here today. But I'm glad to see you. It's time to get back to work."

McConnell said he's ready to work on the farm bill, and on supporting NATO and Ukraine.

• Keep reading.

Fear is splitting the AI trade: The same advances that are raising alarms about rogue agents, cyberattacks and apocalypse are creating a bull case for the companies paid to protect against those threats, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Calls for a slowdown in the advancement of the most sophisticated models pushed down stocks in sectors connected to the AI trade, like chip and memory companies.
• At the same time, stocks rose for cybersecurity companies. CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks — two of the industry's largest companies — were up yesterday roughly 14% and 13%, respectively.

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The prolonged disruption of the Strait of Hormuz has triggered the fuel crisis that oil executives have been warning about for months, The Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can't be tapped much further," the paper says.
• Today's national average gas price is $4.33 for a gallon of regular.

Between the lines: 49 days before the midterms, it's hard to see a scenario where prices come down quickly.

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John Kelly, BlackRock's global head of corporate affairs, will be in the D.C. area today to visit an Ironworkers Local Union 5 training and apprenticeship facility as part of the investment giant's focus on building a workforce for the next generation.

• "When I was younger," Kelly told me in an interview, "I was told to go get a four-year college degree — that was the only way to build wealth and to get economic security. And we forgot along the way, as a country, that there are alternative paths."
• "One of the best paths is to go through these apprenticeships, go through certified training, and go right into the workforce much faster, and have a family-sustaining job directly without any debt and make a good income with benefits that allow you to invest better, live better and retire with dignity, which is BlackRock's mission." Go deeper: "Infrastructure and the opportunity in skilled trades."

➡️ Exclusive: Precision Strategies, founded by Stephanie Cutter and Teddy Goff, named Adam Cubbage, formerly of Dentons Global Advisors, as Precision's first CEO. Cutter continues as managing partner.

• Six months after Precision acquired Firehouse Strategies, Cubbage is charged with scaling Precision's strategic communications, corporate advisory, and crisis and litigation support practices. Read our story.

📈 Jay Carney — former White House press secretary, and alumnus of TIME, Amazon and Airbnb — has joined venture capital firm SV Angel, founded by Ron Conway, as a general partner and head of public policy and communications. Carney will lead SV Angel's new Project Blueprint, partnering with tech founders and lawmakers to shape AI policy.

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said: "I applaud this new effort by Ron Conway and Jay Carney to bring industry leaders and lawmakers together so we can move forward." Read the announcement.

Delaware, West Virginia and New Hampshire are home to America's top tippers, with diners leaving around 21% on average, according to new Toast data shared first with Axios' Sami Sparber.

• Why it matters: "Tip fatigue" is fueling a broader rethink of tipping culture, even as average tips haven't changed much over the past two years.

🧮 By the numbers: Nationwide, diners tipped roughly 19% on average across all restaurant types in Q2 2026.

• At the bottom: California, D.C. and Washington state, where averages run under 18%.

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