Trump Spox Karoline Leavitt Rebuts Elon Musk On AI Deal — Tells Fox News Americans Can Take Trump’s ‘Word For It’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refuted Elon Musk’s claim torpedoing President Donald Trump’s AI infrastructure announcement, telling Fox News that Americans can take Trump and the CEOs’ “word for it.”
Trump held a much-teased press conference Tuesday with CEOs Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Larry Ellison of Oracle to announce an AI infrastructure project called Stargate. But hours later, Musk claimed in a pair of late-night posts that “They don’t actually have the money.”
On Wednesday’s edition of Fox News Channel’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, anchor Martha MacCallum asked Leavitt about Musk’s claim, and Leavitt said “The American people should take President Trump and those CEOs’ words for it”:
MACCALLUM: I want to ask you about this, because we heard this massive announcement of Stargate with Larry Ellison and Sam Altman and Masa Son, the head of SoftBank, $500 billion investment, which I think people welcome, that everyone wants, I believe, us to be on the cutting edge of A.I.
But then Elon Musk came out and said SoftBank doesn’t actually have the money. “SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority.”
What’s the president’s reaction to that from Elon Musk?
LEAVITT: Well, President Trump is very excited about this infrastructure announcement in the field of A.I., which is obviously growing and something the United States of America needs to capitalize on, because our adversaries, such as China, are very advanced in this field.
And so that was a big announcement for our country, for our industries here at home, and also for the American people, because this is going to create a minimum of 100,000 jobs here in the United States of America. So the American people should take President Trump and those CEOs’ words for it. These investments are coming to our great country, and American jobs are coming along with them.
MACCALLUM: All right, well, it’ll be interesting to watch all of that play out.
And Sam Altman, I should point out, went back at Elon Musk and said they absolutely do have the money for this venture, and they have their own bit of back-and-forth on social media that’s been going on for quite some time.
Watch above via Fox News Channel’s The Story with Martha MacCallum.
