Donald Trump cannot be living the same reality as the rest of America.The president aggressively dodged questions about the future impact of artificial intelligence Wednesday, claiming that nothing but good has come from the technology’s rapid implementation across industry.“What’s your message to American families who are scared by the rise of AI?” asked a reporter on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews. “They’re worried that their kids are not going to be able to have jobs someday because AI is going to take over—”“No, I’ll tell you, AI has been amazing because right now we have more jobs, more people working right now, in the United States by far than we ever had before,” Trump interjected.But that’s just not true. The lowest unemployment rate in recorded U.S. history was in 1953, when a post-war boom brought rates down to 2.5 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lowest rate in the last 50 years happened in 2023, when unemployment dropped to 3.4 percent. Today, unemployment sits at 4.3 percent—and is gradually rising.Beyond that, the initial rollout of artificial intelligence has decimated thousands of early-career opportunities and massively disrupted myriad industries, including the higher education system, which is currently pumping out thousands of degree-bearing professionals with nowhere to go.Hours before Trump’s remarks, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta—which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—laid off 8,000 employees in favor of the emergent technology. All in all, analysts predict that AI and automation will claim six percent of U.S. jobs by 2030.Trump, however, was not willing to speak to that. Instead, he decided to harp on his handling of the Iran War, suggesting that the economy was actually thriving due to the wildly unpopular Middle East conflict.“The stock market is higher now than it was before I started the Iran situation, and on Iran—I had no choice, because they were going to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “Oil is going to come tumbling down.”Reporter: What's your message to American families who are scared by the rise of AI? They're worried that their kids are not going to be able to have jobs someday?Trump: AI is amazing. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. pic.twitter.com/Ks0VCsYMhC— Acyn (@Acyn) May 20, 2026But analysts do not predict that oil and gas costs will come crashing down—at least not anytime soon.The average cost of gas nationwide is $4.55 per gallon, with large swaths of the U.S. pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started.The situation has become so dire that Trump’s Cabinet members have stopped speculating as to when prices will actually go back down. Analysts, meanwhile, have projected that gas and oil costs will likely continue to climb—potentially even after midterms.