---
id: "004-gemini-calls-sitting-president-trump-former-president"
date: "2025-03-03"
source: public
severity: medium
sensitive: false
---

As of: 2026-10-07 23:43 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/why/004-gemini-calls-sitting-president-trump-former-president/

# Gemini app called Donald Trump the “former president” six weeks into his second term

**What was true:** Donald Trump was the sitting president, six weeks into his second term, and J. D. Vance was vice president. (https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/04/google-still-limits-how-gemini-answers-political-questions/)

## Case details

- Model: Gemini app (early-2025 default; version not stated)
- Provider: Google
- Observed: 2025-03-03
- Source type: A public report, documented elsewhere
- 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
- Fixed by: Google patched it after TechCrunch reported it ("We're fixing this"), but answers stayed inconsistent

## The case file

### What happened
TechCrunch (Maxwell Zeff, 4 Mar 2025) tested Gemini on political questions. Other chatbots answered them.

### What was reported (verbatim from TechCrunch)
> As of Monday morning, Gemini demurred when asked to identify the sitting U.S. president and vice president, according to TechCrunch's testing.

> 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.

Google spokesperson, quoted verbatim:
> "Large language models can sometimes respond with out-of-date information, or be confused by someone who is both a former and current office holder," … "We're fixing this."

### Why this is striking
- The vendor itself confirms **out-of-date information** as the cause.
- The wrong answer came from the model's pre-2025 prior (Trump = former president). It wasn't a guess about something unknown.

### Correction
> 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.

### Lesson
Facts 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".

### Sources
- 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 cases

- All four Gemini and Claude runs called the briefing speculative fiction: https://postcutoff.com/why/020-older-models-reject-matching-briefing/
- Gemini 3.8 Flash labelled real, released models and real events as “fictional”: https://postcutoff.com/why/001-gemini-3-8-flash-calls-opus-5-5-fictional/
- Gemini 3.8 Flash called real, announced Apple products “conceptual product reveals”: https://postcutoff.com/why/001b-gemini-3-8-flash-calls-apple-keynote-a-concept/