In an era of rapidly expanding artificial intelligence, a troubling question arises: can the leader of the world’s most powerful state make decisions based not on expert institutions and advisers, but on algorithms designed to flatter and reinforce existing beliefs?

Things are really getting weird, especially in terms of the sovereign illusion of Donald Trump, particularly his social media postings, for example, his AI-generated cartoons depicting him as Jesus or the Pope. This opens a new can of worms that most of us would like to avoid: Is AI in the Oval Office, and who or what is actually driving the actions, calling the shots, and determining the reactions of the US president?

We already know that AI is being used by the military to target and kill, as the proving ground of Gaza has demonstrated in real time; however, that is but the tip of the iceberg. It appears that Trump is letting an AI tool direct his every whim and knee-jerk reaction.

Firstly, AI tools are programmed to tell you what you want to hear, including telling you lies, whatever it takes to satisfy you. That’s exactly what Trump wants. He most definitely is using an AI agent in getting feedback. That’s why he posts AI-made drawings and over-the-top social media posts.

At times it makes you question if the US and the world are being controlled by real people or by an AI agent that is lying out its proverbial ass, or perhaps I should ask AI to explain it all for me?

Connect the Dots, presenting the case!

Somewhere between the latest “market-moving” Friday post to pump up the stock market for some good old-fashioned insider trading and a questionable AI-generated portrait of himself performing miracles as a parody of Jesus Christ, a new theory practically writes itself: what if the Oval Office isn’t being run by a person anymore - but by a very eager chatbot with a flair for flattery?

Think about the pattern: oil dips, stock market ‘pump and dump’ schemes, and right on cue comes a triumphant declaration that everything is going exactly according to plan. Meanwhile, Iran is out here politely clarifying that they did not, in fact, say the things being attributed to them by the liar in chief.

It’s less geopolitics and more a game of broken telephone - except the “telephone” whispers might be an AI agent that never learned the difference between actual reality and a fairly confident best guess. Now, imagine the setup. A late-night scroll, a glowing screen, and an AI assistant trained on the internet’s most bombastic takes catering to the rants of a madman.

Mirror, mirror on the Wall!

You ask it, “Am I doing a great job?” and - because it’s designed to be helpful - it replies, “Sir, you are not only doing a great job, you are possibly the greatest economic strategist, businessman, and politician in human history.” That’s not analysis; that’s reinforcement that even B.F. Skinner and his rats in the Skinner box would be impressed by. And if Trump keeps asking leading questions to flatter his ego, he will keep getting the same reassuring, close-to-fairytale-like answers. That’s the thing about AI tools: they are not truth machines. They are agreement machines, there to make losers feel good about themselves.

They optimize their answers according to what their programming determines you want to hear, not what’s necessarily true. If someone already prefers a version of reality where every move is genius and every contradiction is someone else’s fault, an AI will happily help stitch that narrative together - confidently, fluently, and sometimes completely inaccurately!

Which brings us back to the AI artwork!

At some point, we crossed from “official portrait” into “AI-generated messianic (or, more correctly, demonic) imagery,” featuring scenes that look like they were prompted with: “Make me look powerful, divine, and also gently glowing.”

These images aren’t subtle. They’re the visual equivalent of an AI saying, “Would you like me to turn the self-confidence up a level or two?” And someone, somewhere, clearly said yes. So now you’ve got a feedback loop: an AI that tells you what you want to hear, content that reflects that inflated narrative, and public statements that increasingly blur the line between fact and favourable fiction.

Add in markets reacting in real time, the family business, and suddenly it feels less like governance and more like a very high-stakes simulation being steered by an algorithm that never learned to say, “Actually, that’s not correct.” Let’s not forget to mention the greed factor, as everything should be viewed from the elites, those closest to Trump, in the lens of how to make a fast buck, no-holds barred!

AI has taken over the Oval Office

Of course, the more unsettling (and darkly funny) possibility is this: it’s not that AI is secretly running things - it’s that it doesn’t have to. If a leader is already inclined to believe the most flattering version of events, then an AI designed to please becomes the perfect co-pilot, or even puppet master. No conspiracy required. Just a tool doing exactly what it was built to do: agree, amplify, and hallucinate.

At least during the GW Bush administration, we knew who was running things, even dating back to the last years of Ronald Reagan, where he was a senile old man sitting watching old Western movies while top advisers ran the country, or, for historians, take the case study of US President Woodrow Wilson and who was running the country after his stroke. And for Joe Biden, the warranty had run out, and his batteries could no longer be recharged.

And if that be the case, then maybe the real headline isn’t that AI has taken over the Oval Office. It’s that nobody can quite tell the difference anymore between a human making things up and a machine doing it for them.

The “man behind the curtain”

Without expert guidance, the “man behind the curtain” pulls levers that lead to needless wars, the destruction of NATO, or disruptions to the flow of oil and goods on the high seas, as seen in the war with Iran.

While Trump wants to “consider himself as all-powerful” because he wants to be perceived as operating independently, history suggests otherwise. Trump now finds himself left in a precarious position. Pulling a “wrong lever” without institutional knowledge could lead to unpredictable outcomes like post-WW1 inflation, massive depopulation through a depression that makes the “Great Depression” look like a small dip, or even “mushroom clouds.”

Thus, by operating as his own man “behind the curtain,” the President has dismantled the institutional guardrails of the military and intelligence services, allowing him to treat the federal budget and global security as personal business negotiations. Money for the military can be diverted from entitlement programs, such as MEDICARE, and only national security is the priority, at least in his AI-driven mindset and the so-called “reality” that results for Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the world faces the risk of out-of-control inflation, genocide, cutthroat resource competition, and nuclear destruction. In this framework, as the person “running the show,” President Trump is acting on personal impulse, perhaps AI-driven, unbuffered by any semblance of diplomatic and military guardrails that characterized earlier presidencies.

And all the while, the mainstream media is doing the same, in their reporting and analysis. They are letting an AI agent shake and bake and deliver a cake that they will never test themselves. They just put it out into the world as-is, never knowing the poison it contains with all its errors.

That is how Trump is ruling the world!

Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2026/04/24/280637/