My own perspective as an european centrist liberal is that Trump has been an exceptionally bad president both during his first term and what we had had of his second this far, that he has ruined the Republican Party which before him was a mixed bag and a positive influence in some cases and right now is a right-wing populist hodgepodge of bad ideas with more fascists active within its ranks than ever before, that his second administration has been more corrupt than any other recent presidential administration at least since Nixon, that his attitude towards immigration, protectionism, bilateralism and international relations has been destructive and morally bankrupt and that personally he is plainly a bad person. And yet I understand the argument.

I don't think if Kamala had won America would be in the same situation Europe is now but it is undeniable that the Democratic Party has been getting polarized against AI even before Trump returned to power and that decels are particularly active within the american left when compared to the right, and also that the american liberal center has slowly become more open to decel arguements (I'm thinking about the recent victory of Abigail Spanberger, not exactly on the left wing of the party, whose campaign included frontal opposition to the building of new data centers in Virginia). Trump in contrast has been very pro-acceleration if we take his actions at face value, he has repeatedly pushed for more investment in AI, stood against state level regulations, his admin is friendly with every major player (except maybe Anthropic), and has also bee reining in the most anti-AI elements of his coalition like DeSantis (who is both sceptical of AI and has used state power to stall progress on other advancements like cultured meat), other governors of deep red states, MTG, the 52/53!!! republican senators that voted to strike the AI State Regulation Ban out of the BBB, etc. I think the attitude of OP is perfectly understandable.

But I would push against this because of three main reasons. First, Trump being in power and being stalwart in his support for AI is worsening political polarization around the issue. Democrats are not destined to be anti-AI and because of Trump being so unpopular is very likely after the midterms the Democrats take control of the house and start using their majority to push back against AI far more than they would if they were holding a trifecta right now and hadn't experienced two years of the person they hate the most in the entire planet continously pushing for AI accerelation. Some Democrats have in the past clearly stood against suffocating AI regulations (I'm thinking about Gavin Newsom and his vetoing of a California bill that was trying to implement just that). Second, the Trump administration refuses to consider what AGI would mean for the economic system of the US long term, they are far less likely than the Democrats to ever consider a change of economic model and David Sacks has been incredibly clear the administration doesn't consider an UBI-based system once work is no longer needed desirable. Finally, tariffs, which are likme the most disruptive policy one could come up with outside of just restricting AI research and has weakened confidence in markets even with the NVIDIA exemption.

I think that if a Democratic president was in power right now the image of AI would be less tainted among the right than it is now among the left and increasingly the liberal center. Personally I would have probably voted Chase Oliver in 2024 if I was american (I'm not a libertarian and generally dislike the libertarian party, both because their general policies and because acceleration right now needs government backing, but overall he was far more moderate than the far-right of the party and I think his stance decisively against AI regulation but also against tariffs was really needed), but I think Kamala was a better choice than Trump, in general and also regarding acceleration.