Trump says communities that don’t build data centers will be ‘backwards and poor’
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Trump's not wrong that the AI race matters. He's also not wrong that some of the anti-data-center backlash is reflexive NIMBYism dressed up as principle. But "backwards and poor" is a strange way to talk to people who are watching their electric bills climb and their water tables drop because a hyperscaler decided their county was cheap real estate with good grid access.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
President Donald Trump criticized the rising wave of anti-data center sentiment, clashing with his administration’s aggressive efforts to build out the domestic artificial intelligence sector. Trump has placed a concerted focus on making the U.S. the global leader in AI, but voters have steadily voiced concerns about building the data centers needed to power the […]
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Trump's not wrong that the AI race matters. He's also not wrong that some of the anti-data-center backlash is reflexive NIMBYism dressed up as principle. But "backwards and poor" is a strange way to talk to people who are watching their electric bills climb and their water tables drop because a hyperscaler decided their county was cheap real estate with good grid access. That's not backwardness. That's math.
The administration is right that America needs to win the AI infrastructure fight, and losing that fight to China because every township in Virginia and Texas blocks a substation would be a real defeat. We've said as much. But you don't win a public argument by telling voters their concerns are provincial. These aren't Luddites organizing against progress for its own sake. They're homeowners who got a rate hike notice and then found out a warehouse full of GPUs down the road is the reason. Dismissing that as fear of the future is how you turn a winnable policy fight into a populist backlash that swallows the whole AI buildout, good parts included.
If the White House wants communities to say yes to data centers, it has leverage it's not using well: cheap power deals, local hiring guarantees, real transparency on water usage, tax structures that actually return something to the towns hosting these things instead of just the developers. That's the persuasion job. Telling people they'll be poor if they don't get in line is not persuasion, it's a dare, and plenty of local officials are going to take it just to prove a point.
There's also a credibility cost here. The same voters who elected Trump to fight for their communities against distant corporate interests are now being told those interests know better about zoning, water rights, and grid strain than they do. That's a hard sell in Ohio or Georgia, and it should be. Winning the AI race and running roughshod over the people who live next to the servers are not the same project, and pretending otherwise is going to cost more support than it buys.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.