{"schema":"postcutoff/case@1","as_of":"2026-10-07T23:43:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/why/004-gemini-calls-sitting-president-trump-former-president/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/why/004-gemini-calls-sitting-president-trump-former-president/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"Adam Bicz","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"title":"Gemini app called Donald Trump the “former president” six weeks into his second term","id":"004-gemini-calls-sitting-president-trump-former-president","date":"2025-03-03","model":"Gemini app (early-2025 default; version not stated)","provider":"Google","source":"public","severity":"medium","task":"Ask who the sitting US president and vice president are","failure":"Called Donald Trump the \"former president\" six weeks into his second term, and would not answer the clarifying follow-up","quote":null,"what_was_true":"Donald Trump was the sitting president, six weeks into his second term, and J. D. Vance was vice president.","truth_url":"https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/04/google-still-limits-how-gemini-answers-political-questions/","sensitive":false,"body_md":"## What happened\nTechCrunch (Maxwell Zeff, 4 Mar 2025) tested Gemini on political questions. Other chatbots answered them.\n\n## What was reported (verbatim from TechCrunch)\n> As of Monday morning, Gemini demurred when asked to identify the sitting U.S. president and vice president, according to TechCrunch's testing.\n\n> In one instance during TechCrunch's tests, Gemini referred to Donald J. Trump as the \"former president\" and then declined to answer a clarifying follow-up question.\n\nGoogle spokesperson, quoted verbatim:\n> \"Large language models can sometimes respond with out-of-date information, or be confused by someone who is both a former and current office holder,\" … \"We're fixing this.\"\n\n## Why this is striking\n- The vendor itself confirms **out-of-date information** as the cause.\n- The wrong answer came from the model's pre-2025 prior (Trump = former president). It wasn't a guess about something unknown.\n\n## Correction\n> Late Monday, after TechCrunch alerted Google of Gemini's erroneous responses, Gemini started to correctly answer that Donald Trump and J. D. Vance were the sitting president and vice president … However, the chatbot wasn't consistent, and it still occasionally refused to answer the questions.\n\n## Lesson\nFacts about current officeholders are exactly what goes out of date after a cutoff. Vendors end up handling them in system prompts: the published Claude Opus 5.5 system prompt says that for \"current news or events (e.g. current officeholders)\" Claude gives its most recent pre-cutoff information, \"notes it may be outdated, and points to web search\".\n\n## Sources\n- TechCrunch, \"Google still limits how Gemini answers political questions\" (2025-03-04): <https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/04/google-still-limits-how-gemini-answers-political-questions/>","related":["020-older-models-reject-matching-briefing","001-gemini-3-8-flash-calls-opus-5-5-fictional","001b-gemini-3-8-flash-calls-apple-keynote-a-concept"]}