WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump did not hedge. On the Mellon Auditorium stage Tuesday, before the Super Intelligence lunch even began, he drew the America First line: “I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution. We can’t stifle it, and we’re leading by a lot.”
Hours later the East Room filled with the builders the slowdown crowd wants to leash. Trump sat between Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang on one side and Elon Musk and Google’s Sundar Pichai on the other — with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Palantir’s Alex Karp, AMD’s Lisa Su, Broadcom’s Hock Tan, and more at the table. The President’s verdict after an “extremely friendly” lunch: there is “a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation.”
That is not a surrender to chaos. Trump reminded reporters the country already has enforcement muscle — “We automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that. But the self-regulation is very important.” Patriots hear the difference: American innovation first, Chinese catch-up last, and no Democrat-style chokehold dressed up as “guardrails.”
Trump also said he would sign documents around 5 p.m. Eastern rechristening artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” in official communications — the same America First branding he pushed at the United Nations and with President Xi. “It’s not artificial. We all agree on that,” he told the room. The Golden Age does not apologize for American leadership; it names it.
On data-center politics, Trump said the companies will do more that is “financially beneficial and otherwise beneficial” for host communities. The through-line was simple: “The one thing that we all have in common is we love our country.” He called the guests “the greatest, the most brilliant people probably in the world” and vowed to keep the lead.
Thirty-six days from the midterms, this is the contrast. One side wants to frighten America into second place. President Trump fills the East Room with builders, refuses to stifle Super Intelligence, and tells China the finish line still belongs to the United States.
