Trump’s new government chatbot said Biden won in 2020, then suddenly stopped answering

America.gov, the AI chatbot President Trump launched on Tuesday as the “front door” to the US government, spent its first day contradicting him. Asked about the 2020 election, it said official federal sources don’t show that widespread fraud changed the result, the Associated Press found. By Wednesday it was telling people it couldn’t answer “political questions.”

“No. Official results show Joseph R. Biden Jr. won”

The site says its answers come from “official government sources,” and on Tuesday that meant a string of replies Trump won’t have enjoyed. CNN asked it whether Trump won the 2020 election. “No. Official results show Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 presidential election,” it replied, adding that official reviews “did not find fraud at a scale that reversed the certified result: Biden 306, Trump 232 electoral votes.”

It didn’t stop there. In tests by the AP, CNN and The Independent, the chatbot:

• Third term: said the 22nd Amendment bars anyone from being elected president more than twice, and that Trump “has already been elected twice (2016 and 2024).”
• Climate: said recent warming is “largely from human greenhouse-gas emissions, mainly burning fossil fuels.” Trump has called climate change a hoax.
• Inflation and prices: said inflation was 3.0% when Trump took office in January 2025, “not a historic high,” and that grocery prices “have not fallen since January 2025.”
• Investment: said the White House’s own investment page “does not document a $21 trillion total,” a figure Trump has repeated this month.
• His salary: said Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy had also declined presidential pay, after Trump suggested at the launch that no other president had done so.
• The Pentagon: called it “the headquarters of the Department of Defense,” not the Department of War.

The answers changed while Trump was still speaking

According to the AP, the site began changing its answers during the launch event itself. Asked again about 2020, it said it couldn’t answer “political questions,” the same reply it gave when asked whether Trump had been impeached or convicted of felony charges.

The block wasn’t complete at first: CNN and The Independent both got direct answers later on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, The Independent found the chat wasn’t working at all, showing only the message “Chat is unavailable right now.” When it came back, the answers were different. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale posted on X:

Yesterday: It said Biden won the 2020 election and there’s no indication of widespread fraud. Today: Says it can’t answer such questions.

Daniel Dale, CNN fact-checker

Chatbot answers can shift from one conversation to the next, so these are what reporters were shown at the time, not answers anyone can now reproduce.

What the White House says

Trump called the chatbot “damn good” at the launch. Asked about it debunking his claims, the White House told CNN in an unsigned email: “America.gov will continue to be updated to provide more features, resources, and the most accurate information from the federal government.” It added that Trump and his administration “have been clear about issues surrounding the 2020 election.” It hasn’t said who changed the answers or why.

America.gov runs on commercial AI models, with Google’s Gemini among its partners, as we reported when Trump made the site official. It launched on the same day he signed an order telling federal agencies to stop saying “AI” and call it “Super Intelligence” instead, and a week after he called fears about AI a “hoax”.

Why it matters

America.gov is meant to be where Americans go first for answers about their government. If its answers can be switched off when they’re politically awkward, people will reasonably ask what else it has been told not to say, and whether an AI built on official records can stay independent of the person in charge.

Sources: Associated Press, CNN, The Independent, Daniel Dale on X.