Trump Recounts Asking an AI Executive if He Liked Orange as His Team Warned Him To Prepare for Jail

US President Donald Trump claimed in a Sunday night 60 Minutes interview that his administration warned an unnamed executive from a major artificial intelligence company to prepare for jail after allegations of improper AI conduct were brought to his team.

The account surfaced during a discussion about whether the United States should slow the development of advanced AI.

Trump defended continued investment as a matter of competition with China, although he did not identify the company or explain what its executive had allegedly done.

Trump Recounts Warning an AI Executive About Jail

Trump told interviewer Ross Douthat that officials had received information about someone suspected of improper activity involving AI.

He offered no details about the alleged behaviour, the officials involved or whether authorities had established a legal violation. Nor did he provide a date for the exchange.

'We called them very strongly and said, get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss goodnight,' Trump stated.

Trump described his team's unusual question to the individual as 'Do you like the colour orange?' He also recounted a warning to spend the evening with family because 'tomorrow morning, you're going to jail.'

According to Trump, the warning had an immediate effect. He claimed the executive 'totally changed everything' after the encounter. He did not specify what was altered or whether a prosecution was contemplated.

The president also addressed whether the alleged conduct had been malicious. He stated that he did not believe it was, while acknowledging that it 'coulda been malicious'.

Trump's AI Executive Story Raises Unanswered Questions

When Douthat queried whether the target was a leader of a major AI company, Trump replied that the person belonged to 'one of the big ones'. That narrowed his description without identifying an employer or an individual. Trump did not disclose either name.

Trump did not identify a specific criminal allegation or indicate whether an investigation followed. His version of the exchange remains an uncorroborated account, rather than an established enforcement action.

Trump Balances AI Executive Deals With China Rivalry

Elsewhere in the interview, Douthat raised public concern over data centres and warnings from AI industry leaders that the technology could create catastrophic risks. Trump stated that he was open to safety guardrails but warned against allowing American developers to fall behind.

'We're leading number one. And China has no guardrails, by the way,' he stated. Without continued development, he argued, the US would face an 'unbelievable disadvantage'.

That position reflects the administration's courtship of the technology sector. In January 2025, Trump announced the Stargate infrastructure venture with OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son.

In March 2026, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed a White House pledge on power for data centres. At a September 2026 gathering, industry leaders, including Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, signed a voluntary accord addressing internal controls, external evaluations, and board oversight.

Trump described the accord as 'morally binding'. Business Insider stated that representatives for the White House and Department of Justice had not immediately responded to its requests for comment on the alleged jail warning.