Asked by President Trump in the Oval Office to speak about the importance of an American victory in the AI race against China, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took the opportunity to praise a Democratic president right in front of Trump, implying that Trump — with his new Executive Order — could perhaps equal the accomplishment of his predecessor.
Trump, who is known not to appreciate comparisons with other presidents not named Andrew Jackson, listened as Cruz told the story of what he characterized as a similar “inflection point” in American history, during the 1990s rise of the consumer internet.
“Bill Clinton was President at the time. He signed an Executive Order just like you’re doing,” Cruz told Trump, praising the Democrat’s foresight, “that put in the law a light-touch regulatory approach to the Internet.”
Cruz: We don’t want China’s values of surveillance and centralized control by the communist government governing AI. We want American values of free speech, of individual liberty, of respecting the individual. pic.twitter.com/8sha5WdO0B
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 11, 2025
The Trump EO threatens to prosecute any state that attempts to regulate AI on its own, asserting that only a lightly regulated approach monitored by federal law, not individual states, will result in America’s maintaining its AI lead over China.
Cruz had the temerity to say in front of Trump that Clinton’s approach led to “incredible economic growth and jobs in the United States” — the very things that Trump says his policies will produce but which have so far failed to materialize.
Cruz compared the European Union’s “heavy-handed approach” to regulating the internet, and declared that the tech advances enabled by Clinton — and the contemporaneous “shale revolution” — were almost solely responsible for the U.S. rocketing passed the E.U. in GDP growth since 1993.
Cruz asserts that China’s values like “surveillance” and “centralized control” — rather than the purported U.S. values of “free speech” and “individual liberty” — will dominate AI if China wins the race.
The Senator faced criticism in the comments from doubters about the Trump administration’s commitment to those American values, one example being “@SenTedCruz You better check with @realDonaldTrump before you say America values free speech. He has a different idea.”