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Trump says his team told a big AI company's leader to get ready for jail

He wouldn't name the executive. On 60 Minutes he also said he doesn't mind AI guardrails, as long as China doesn't pull ahead.

By Think Facility · November 9, 2026 · AI policy AI safety Save

President Trump told 60 Minutes that his administration once called the leader of a big AI company and told them to get ready for jail. He sat down with correspondent Ross Douthat at the White House on Friday, November 6, 2026, and CBS aired the interview on Sunday, November 8, then posted the full transcript.

He wouldn't say who it was. Asked whether it was a leader of a major AI company, he answered "One of the big ones." In the same exchange he said he doesn't mind guardrails on AI, as long as they don't put the US behind China.

Interviewer

Ross Douthat, 60 Minutes

Recorded

at the White House Friday

Manages AI risk

The DOJ

The AI leader's name

I can't tell you

On guardrails

I don't mind guardrails

What he said about the jail call

Douthat had asked whether Trump simply thinks the risk from AI isn't real. Trump said it's smaller than the industry makes out, and that it can be managed by the Justice Department.

Then, by his account, the call: get ready to go to jail, and give your wife a kiss good night. He told Douthat "I can't tell you" twice when asked for a name. He said the person changed everything after the call, and that he doesn't think it was done maliciously (though, he added, it could have been).

That's the whole account. Trump gave no date, no company and no description of what the "something bad" was. Nothing in the transcript says whether anyone was charged.

Guardrails, and China

The guardrails line came when Douthat asked if he'd work with Democrats on AI safety. Trump said he "would absolutely" do it, then set his condition.

He added that China has no guardrails. When Douthat pushed back that China has the guardrails of a totalitarian state, Trump agreed, kind of: there, he said, whatever President Xi says goes, and his own power is "not quite that strong."

Earlier in the answer he'd framed the whole subject as a two-way race. If America doesn't build it, he said, China will, and he told Douthat there's nobody else in it.

What it means for jobs, and for Congress

Douthat read Trump a line from Elon Musk: that the end game of superintelligence is a world where nobody has to work and everyone gets a universal high income. Asked if that sounded like a good future, Trump said "No." He turned instead to data centers, saying communities like West Virginia's want them.

That answer matters more now than it would have a month ago. CBS projected that Democrats would win control of both the House and the Senate in the midterms, and the broadcast notes that the result gives Democrats in Congress new powers over budgets, hearings and subpoenas. If those Democrats write AI safety rules, Trump has now said on camera that he'd work with them.

I'd watch the jail story most closely. A president saying on camera that his administration warned an unnamed AI executive about jail is the kind of claim a congressional committee with subpoena power can ask about.

What aired and what didn't

The jail exchange isn't in CBS's transcript of the broadcast. It's in the full transcript, which matches the extended interview CBS said it would post on YouTube Sunday night (the show itself aired at 7 p.m. Eastern). The guardrails answer and the line about China are in both.