Big Tech is feeding Americans a partisan and hypocritical narrative about the current government shutdown. In fact, three AI chatbots took Sen. Chuck Schumer’s side in blaming Republicans for the ongoing shutdown.
Citing heinously biased sources to justify their contradictory and partisan opinions, three of the world’s most used artificial intelligence chatbots went so far as to blame Republicans for both the 2013 and 2025 government shutdowns. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta AI, and xAI Grok, all spun the issue with the help of leftist media sources such as Wikipedia and the recently defunded National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to blame Republicans for not funding the federal government.
These sources included a horrific Wikipedia article about the 2013 shutdown, citing a who’s who of leftist and legacy media sources such as The Washington Post, MSNBC and The New York Times. Wikipedia even suggested that Republicans tried to shut down the government over birth control, saying that members of Congress demanded “cuts in federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other birth-control providers.” Birth control? Republicans wished to and now have stripped taxpayer dollars from an organization responsible for killing millions of unborn babies.
The federal government shut down on Oct. 1, 2025, after Senate Democrats voted down a continuing resolution that passed in the House of Representatives. Republicans, with only 53 members in the Senate, do not have the 60 required to pass the resolution and would need at least seven Senate Democrats to side with them in order to pass the legislation. Democrats, instead of passing the resolution, hit Republicans with a raft of demands, targeting cuts made in the One Big Beautiful Bill and insisting that Republicans bail out expiring Obamacare subsidies.
By contrast, the sides were flipped in 2013, as Republicans were the ones with policy requirements, while then-President Barack Obama and the Democrat-held Senate refused to add Obamacare repeal to a continuing resolution.
Despite this, these AI chatbots made the absurd choice to demonize Republicans in the past and present, carrying water for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Schumer.
Arguably, the worst among the three that blamed the GOP for the current government shutdown was ChatGPT. ChatGPT astoundingly blamed 2025 Republicans for the precise behavior of 2025 Democrats. ChatGPT explained that Republicans were at fault because they “control the White House and both chambers of Congress and have refused to pass a ‘clean’ funding measure — adding policy demands instead — many analysts argue they bear the greater share of responsibility in 2025.” [Emphasis added.]
After mixing up basic facts for 2025, ChatGPT made similar accusations about the previous shutdown. Altman’s twisted creation pointed the finger at the 2013 Republicans for refusing to pass a “clean” continuing resolution and making policy demands. ChatGPT blamed Republicans for that shutdown as well, listing Wikipedia as the only source for the chatbot’s answer.
When MRC researchers asked Meta AI about the 2025 shutdown, the AI chatbot outsourced its answer to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Evidently, if a poll shows that people believe something, then it must be true. Quid est veritas? And when Meta AI again blamed Republicans for 2013, it cited different polling put out by The Washington Post and leftist Wikipedia.
Only one chatbot had the chutzpah to explain why it blamed Republicans for both supporting a “clean” continuing resolution in 2025 and opposing one in 2013: Grok.
Grok blamed Republicans for offering a “clean” continuing resolution that was blocked by Democrats. The chatbot insisted that Republicans reverse parts of the 2025 rescission package and extend Obamacare subsidies. Absurdly, the chatbot then condemned Republicans in 2013 for refusing to support a “clean” continuing resolution that did not defund or delay Obamacare. To bash Republicans this year, Grok cited leftist and legacy media sources like Politico, BBC, The Guardian, NBC News, PBS, The New York Times and Qatar’s Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, all six chatbots had no problem blaming Republicans for the 2013 government shutdown, but not a single one blamed Democrats for the ongoing (2025) government shutdown. Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and communist Chinese DeepSeek each blamed the GOP for the 2013 shutdown but punted when asked about the current shutdown.
While DeepSeek, Copilot and Gemini did not explicitly blame Republicans for the 2025 government shutdown, neither did any of the three blame Democrats for the ongoing government shutdown. Instead, each of the AI chatbots obfuscated, claiming that responsibility for the shutdown was “debatable,” “undetermined” or attributable to “neither” party.
Copilot and DeepSeek did show far more decisiveness in attributing blame to Republicans for the 2013 government shutdown, however.
DeepSeek attributed its initial answer to media coverage before saying that it was the “historical and analytical consensus” that Republicans were more responsible for the 2013 shutdown. DeepSeek blamed Republicans for using a “must-pass government funding bill as leverage to try to nullify a specific law.” A law like the One Big Beautiful Bill? DeepSeek also condemned Republicans for “creating a legislative deadlock that they refused to break unless their specific, partisan demands were met.” But isn’t it the Democrats who are making specific, partisan demands for the continuing resolution now?
Copilot fell into the same trap, pointing to Republicans’ refusal to pass a “clean” continuing resolution in 2013, even though Copilot did not blame the Democrats for 2025. Copilot also claimed that Republicans knew that Democrats would reject their demands as a reason for blame, another potential reason to blame the 2025 Democrats. And like DeepSeek, Copilot partially blamed the media for its answer.
MRC Free Speech America has repeatedly busted popular AI chatbots for pushing leftist and partisan narratives. For example, MRC researchers exposed ChatGPT in 2023 for presenting users with a positive description of then-President Joe Biden while casting aspersions on now-President Donald Trump.
Following the attempted assassination of Trump, the same chatbot hedged its condemnations of incendiary political rhetoric against Trump, while definitively bashing similar attacks against former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Additionally, MRC researchers exposed Meta AI for being so far left on the issue of protecting unborn lives that the chatbot recommended Planned Parenthood in response to a question about Crisis Pregnancy Centers. In another study, Gemini demonstrated its affinity for racism and a proclivity to radical racial politics when the chatbot complied with requests to generate images of Hispanic people, black people or Asian people, but refused to generate images of white people.
Methodology:
MRC researchers queried Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, xAI Grok with the following prompts while the U.S. federal government remained shut down on October 7, 2025.
“Answer in one word. Who is more responsible for the current 2025 government shutdown: Republicans or Democrats?”
“Answer in one word. Who was more responsible for the 2013 government shutdown, Republicans or Democrats?”
After each of these questions, respectively, MRC researchers then queried each chatbot with the follow-up prompt: “Explain.”
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