There was little reason to doubt President Donald Trump’s position on data centers given his administration’s robust support of AI development . Only now he’s ratcheting up criticism of data center opponents as people who want to plunge cities into poverty.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site on Monday. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
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“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” he continued, referring to the classic Greek fable in which a farmer owns a goose that lays golden eggs only to be killed by the same farmer.
The eye-catching comments from the president are likely to heighten the potency of AI as a November midterm issue. Polls show most Americans are opposed to the spread of data centers. A May survey from Gallup indicated more Americans preferred living near a nuclear power plant over a data center.
Trump had previously staked out a position on the controversial issue last month after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott implemented a moratorium on further data center construction. “They are tremendously important for the economics,” Trump said at the time. “Data centers could be bigger than oil.”
‘Let’s put a data center at Mar-a-Lago’
The tech industry has poured over $700 billion this year in the AI buildout spree, and much of it has flowed to additional data center construction. However, Americans are increasingly skeptical of their benefits since those facilities drive up demand for electricity and contribute to higher power bills. They’re also increasingly concerned about their potential to increase noise and water pollution.
Some Democrats were quick to lambast Trump as out of step with the public.
“How about we put one in Mar-a-Lago?,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told a MeidasTouch reporter. “I love that. Let’s put a data center at Mar-a-Lago, and we’ll see how backwards and poor he is in response to that.”
Even proponents of AI development argued that the president should have rephrased his case for data centers. “I agree with Trump on data centers but there’s way more persuasive messaging than this,”Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House communications aide to Trump in his first-term, said in an X post.
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Explaining Democratic and GOP stances on data centers
Many Democrats and Republicans have swung against data centers in recent months given the mounting public backlash. In Ohio, Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown has cast his opponent, Republican Sen. Jon Husted, as “the face of data centers.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro once welcomed data centers as a boon to the state economy. However, Shapiro — viewed as a possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate — completed a U-turn and slammed the brakes on their spread in the state. On Aug. 18, he rolled out an executive order obligating future data center projects to be blessed by local officials and eliminated their eligibility for a fast-track permitting program.
“We will not be bulldozed by the lawyers working for these big tech companies. That will not happen in the commonwealth,” he said during a signing ceremony.
Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott instituted a moratorium on the construction of data centers until state regulators could audit the ones seeking connection to the Texas power grid.
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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Trump calls data center opponents ‘backwards and poor’ as $700-billion AI buildout faces bipartisan backlash
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