Washington Week with The Atlantic was guest hosted on Friday by PBS News Hour White House correspondent Liz Landers, who in the lead segment made one miss the (relative) restraint (occasionally) exercised by the regular show host Jeffrey Goldberg.
The first issue of the night, how much an existential threat Artificial Intelligence poses to humanity, has splintered both political parties, but Landers assumed the absolute worst-case A.I scenario, then turned on President Trump for his supposed cavalier lack of concern about the hypothetical threat.
Liz Landers: Warnings of A.I.'s threat to humanity are coming from surprising places.
[clip] Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI: The world is right to be afraid of this.
[clip] Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic: If an A.I. model is powerful enough, it can circumvent attempts to shut it down.
[clip] Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): A.I. models can already escape human control, commit felonies, and create viruses.
[clip] Steve Bannon, Former Trump White House Adviser: This is a hinge in history. We have to handle this right.
Landers: But President Trump says the only guardrails A.I. needs is a high I.Q. president. Tonight, why Trump is so quick to dismiss the chorus of A.I. concerns and is instead focusing on next week's state visit with President Xi and looking to demolish the Kennedy Center, next.
Landers' description of the A.I. threat was even balder opening the first segment, where she bluntly stated as fact that A.I. posed "threats to humanity."
Washington Week guest host Liz Landers of PBS News: "Warnings of A.I.'s threat to humanity are coming from surprising places. But President Trump says the only guardrails A.I. needs is a high I.Q. president. Tonight, why Trump is so quick to dismiss the chorus of A.I. concerns." pic.twitter.com/MlvssG8OP6
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) September 20, 2026
Landers: Just as A.I.'s threats to humanity reached a fever pitch with even tech CEOs publicly calling for government regulation, half of Congress left Washington to return to the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to Election Day, preventing lawmakers from legislatively addressing concerns about A.I., among them, that humans could use the technology to create biological weapons, and that artificial intelligence itself could go rogue, beyond human control.
Eventually things cooled down a bit, with Landers allowing the possibility of an ulterior motive behind the stated concerns of A.I. CEOs warning people about the rise of A.I., though her CNBC guest also leaned into the apocalyptic argument.
Landers: Eamon, to Alayna's point there about these A.I. tech CEOs calling for regulation, saying, help us regulate our companies, this -- the timing of this is notable because several of these companies are going public soon. I know you cover this. Do you think that these A.I. companies are legitimately concerned about these threats, or are they calling for regulation to protect themselves?
Eamon Javers, Senior Washington Correspondent, CNBC: Well, there's a cynical view of this, which is that they're calling for regulation because they want to protect their position as the leading companies in A.I., right? And that what they want is really a duopoly or a small group of A.I. firms that entrench their positions with this regulatory fence around them. But there are a lot of people inside these A.I. companies who have genuine concerns that these A.I.s can get out of control, can cause significant problems, billions of dollars in damage, and then you hear the sci-fi scenario of, you know, eliminating all of humanity….
Of course there was a political angle.
Javers: And President Trump, the populist, taking the anti-populist stance on data centers, which is so fascinating to watch, right?
Landers: Okay. So, to that point, 70 percent of Americans are opposed to data centers being built in their communities. Why is Trump taking such an unpopular stance on this?
The elitist media seldom pointed out to Democratic politicians their "unpopular stance" on, for example, transgenders in sports, in order to question why Democrats would still hold those stances. Apparently only some politicians are allowed to have principles.
It’s becoming a trend for PBS News Hour White House correspondents to take advantage of hosting Washington Week by being even more ideological than the regular host Goldberg. Laura Barron-Lopez, now off at left-wing MS NOW, prodded her guests leftward in a September 2024 guest host slot.
