California conservatives descended on Orange County over the weekend for the Autumn 2025 Republican Congress and Leadership Summit. Part of the session at the three-day event will focus on artificial intelligence, giving a peek at how the Donald Trump party will use AI in the midterm elections of 2026.
Brent Lauder, California director of a right-wing nonprofit called the Leadership Institute, held a fully attended consultation in the treaty on how Republicans should use AI in a rapidly evolving environment. The Lauder consultations highlighted the need for conservatives to embrace new technologies as quickly as possible, or risk being surrounded by Democrats using AI.
“AI is exactly this kind of new technology, and we don't want to see conservatives adopt it as we've done before, so that's why it's so important to us,” Lauder told the audience.
In 2008, the president's hopeful Barack Obama promised to announce his VP candidate (Joe Biden) in text. And in 2012, President Obama's campaign embraced social media in ways his competitor, Mitt Romney, did not.
The 51-year-old Lauder, who previously ran the Political Action Committee that elected Trump to his first term in 2016, understands that Republicans cannot technically be caught flat.
Such fear of missing out seemed to drive much of the debate. However, the loader also touted the increased efficiency they saw when using AI. Loader told the audience to think of AI as a “super intern.” He says that AI is making a mistake and it is important not to use anything that AI produces as a final product. And he repeatedly reminded the audience that AI creates things and creates errors. It was a tool, he told the crowd. And it was interesting to hear him downplay his abilities while being optimistic. It contrasts with the hype of AI CEOs who claim that tools like ChatGpt are like having doctoral experts in all fields.
Lowder also emphasized that by inviting tools like ChatGpt to pretend to be conservative operatives, you can get really interesting ideas.
Lowder performed a video of Steve Jobs, who seemed incredibly visionary after 40 years at Leeds University in 1985. The work predicted that one day people might be able to talk to Aristotle. Audiences listened to the predictions of Apple co-founders and instantly created connections with tools like Openai's ChatGpt.
Lowder spoke to the audience about the different types of AI tools that can be used beyond ChatGpt, including Grok. He told the audience that his favorite tools were baffling as he cited sources and notebook lum for customization options.
He also recommended that anyone who needs to use confidential documents run the model locally with something like Yang.ai. Privacy was clearly a major concern for political campaigns, and even the greenest conventions seemed to understand it.
One man in the audience asked if he could ask ChatGpt about secret information that could have been uploaded by the Democrats. Lauder told him he wouldn't do his job, but pointed out that Republicans shouldn't upload anything sensitive.
Loader said that it could make people nervous because they find AI creepy, especially considering how it is portrayed in popular media. And he knew where that anxiety came from, but it was essential that the conservative movement embrace it if they wanted to win the election.
Loader has asked AI to write several social media posts, generating bullet points on innovation and the free market. One example that came back was “Let's continue to stream these incentives to see innovation as we change our world.” Loader then showed how he asked the bot to punch up the language and make it “short” and more “edgy” but spit out “We're here to dominate, innovate and conquer in the free market. In the free market jungle.”
“So, 'Yeah, I don't know if you want the candidate to tell you they're here to control it,'' Trump can say that, but maybe not everyone, right? “Loader said with a laugh from the audience.
While Lauder is clearly all-in on Trump and Trumpism, it was interesting to hear him speak in what might be considered an older-school Republican language. When asked about biases that Lowder could exist in major AI chatbots, he spoke about an infamous example when Google's Gemini produced images of the father of the American founder in early 2024.
As loaders see, the problem with so many AI chatbots is that they are trained on the internet. “You probably think that's still there. The reality is, all of these models were basically trained on the internet? But he insisted that the free market would sort it all out. It's not how Trump sees the world these days, as he's 10% of Inter.
Loader also demonstrated how to use AI image tools to clean up campaign photos using failed local politician Michelle Steele as an example of the slide. Loader said that if you take a photo for the campaign and want to remove a tattoo, it's something that AI can help you, showing the audience before and after the “unwanted tattoo” photo.
During the 2024 race, Steele lost to his opponent, Democrat Derek Tran, on a very close margin in Orange County. How close is it? Only 653 votes. Steel compared Tran to Mao Zedong and used images of the hammer and sickle in the mailer. Tran is the son of a Vietnamese refugee who fled from the communist state, making her attacks particularly strange. However, it is unclear whether she will actually use AI to remove tattoos from her campaign mailer. That could have been the hypothesis on the part of Loader who claimed he had no actual possession of anything for tattoos.
Loader was recognized as knowledgeable and rational about the possibilities and limitations of AI, but sometimes he could show the limitations of his knowledge, such as when he suggested that using EM dashes could suggest that something was written when it was written by AI. Or a long hyphen, as he called it.
“When we see someone email us, we all laugh at each other. Or we put a quote that we can say that left-wing candidates are generated by GPT,” Lauder told the audience. “Do you know how to say it's GPT? GPT really loves big hyphens. So if you really see big hyphens and they use a lot of them, it's definitely GPT, I'll guarantee you.”
Again, they are called EM dashes. And the reason AI chatbots like to use EM dash is because people in their 30s and 40s love to use EM dash. People jokingly call them “millennial em dashes” on social media. In fact, President Donald Trump may use EM dashes in his true social posts. But that's not because Trump uses AI. Because Trump often directed people to his posts and during the 2024 presidential election, the person was 34-year-old assistant Natalie Harp. Is there a possibility that Trump will use AI? of course. But a more likely explanation is that his millennial assistant is just showing her love for the millennial EM dash.
Loaders clearly believe that AI is a powerful tool. And Republicans who embrace platforms like Prplexity, ChatGpt and Notebooklm are left in the dust.
“The bottom line is that we have to get through that tension, and if we don't, there will be consequences,” Loader said. “I'm not going anywhere.”
And while you personally feel about AI, Loader's perspective is one that is currently shared by almost all political operatives across the spectrum. You may like AI, you may dislike it. But even if the AI bubble bursts tomorrow, it feels like some form of technology for years to come. The question is how the Loader and his enemies decide how to acquire it.
