Time reports Trump consulted Grok for hours before the Venezuela invasion
Time cites an unnamed source saying Trump spent hours questioning Elon Musk's Grok about Venezuela in December, weeks before the US invaded on 3 January.
President Trump consulted Elon Musk's chatbot Grok during a December 2025 meeting about whether to invade Venezuela, Time magazine reported, according to TechCrunch's account of the story. Time's source, who was not named, said Trump spent hours discussing Venezuela with the chatbot. The United States invaded on 3 January 2026.
According to the account, Grok described Nicolás Maduro as a deeply unpopular dictator and suggested Venezuelans would celebrate his removal. Trump also asked the chatbot how people in the country would respond to Maduro's capture. After the operation succeeded, the source said, Trump came to regard Grok as ingenious.
The claim rests on a single unnamed person familiar with the meeting. TechCrunch's article carries no statement from xAI, the White House or other officials, and we have not seen Time's original piece, so none of the details has been confirmed. Neither side's response is on record in the material we reviewed.
TechCrunch adds context from earlier reporting. By June 2026, it said, the Pentagon's AI chief had stated that the military used Grok during strikes on Iran. The outlet also noted that the December meeting came about seven months after Musk left his DOGE role, and it cited the Atlantic and the New York Times on Venezuelan boat strikes.