While the world’s richest man has thrown his weight behind President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s agenda, the Grok chatbot on Musk’s own social media platform stated that Democrats are far better on the economy.
When asked Wednesday by X user Alex Cole, a software engineer and self-described progressive, if Republicans or Democrats have been “better for the economy in the last 30 years,” Grok seemed to undermine its own creator for all of X, formerly Twitter, to see.
“Since WWII, Democrats have outperformed Republicans on the economy,” the chatbot replied, racking up more than 33,000 likes. “GDP growth averages 4.23% under Dems vs. 2.36% under GOP. Job creation? 1.7% yearly for Dems, 1.0% for Republicans.”
“Also, 9 of the last 10 recessions started under Republican presidents,” it continued.
Musk has fully committed to the second Trump administration and spent a fortune to help reelect him, however. He’s currently dismantling federal agencies under the Department of Government Efficiency in a purported effort to slash wasteful public spending.
Grok was adamant Wednesday that Republicans have an historically bad track record when it comes to the economy, however, and repeated its answer with only minor changes even after the initial question was asked — which even Cole found overwhelming.
“Thanks, Grok, that’s enough for now!” he replied.
“Can you stop the replies now?” Cole later demanded.
Tennessee election commissioner Chris D. Jackson eventually joined in, asking the chatbot whether Trump or former President Joe Biden were “the better economic president” in regards to job creation, the nation’s GDP, unemployment and the stock market.
Grok once again crawled through presumably vast amounts of data to side with Democrats.
“Biden added 15.7M jobs, with unemployment dropping to 3.4% — a 53-year low,” it replied. “Trump lost 3M jobs by the end, even pre-COVID job growth was slower. GDP growth was close: 2.6% under Trump (2017-2019), 2.3% under Biden (since 2022).”
“Stock market?” Grok continued. “S&P gained 11% under Biden, but Trump’s era had a bigger Wall Street euphoria. Unemployment spiked to 14.7% in 2020 under Trump — highest ever. Data’s clear, you decide.”
Musk launched Grok in 2023 as a competitor to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT, and while the chatbot is touted as having “a sense of humor,” the public responses Wednesday weren’t the result of amusing prompts — and focused clearly on data.
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The viral experiment comes only one week after Grok was asked to use “all publicly available information from 1980 on” to determine “the likelihood from 1-100” that Trump is an asset of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and Grok estimated “a 75-85% likelihood.”