Trump’s Big Bet on Data Centers

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 01, 2026

 

When the paranoid style in American politics gets in the way of the Trump administration’s initiatives (and only then), this White House shows little tolerance for pop conspiracy theorizing.

 

In recent weeks, the president and his allies have been giving the “Epstein files” treatment to the most salacious claims about data centers. In an interview last week with his formerly estranged fixer, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump touted the national data-center development over which he has presided. Not only did the president assure his interlocutor that the “tremendous amounts of jobs and money” they create are desirable, he also tried to bust some of the more popular myths about data centers promoted by their opponents.

 

This week, the president trotted out a more confrontational version of that message. “Communities that don’t take a data center, they’re making a mistake,” Trump said. He took that line of criticism further still in a post on Truth Social: “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.” The communities that “want to be successful and rich,” by contrast, will “let Data Reign.”

 

With that, Trump uncorked a cascade of feigned outrage among aspiring populists who channeled what they imagine to be the public’s passions.

 

Not since Hillary Clinton infamously put half of Trump’s supporters into a “basket of deplorables” has a major political figure so carelessly slandered the public, the commentator Ron Fournier argued. “Trump has lost his populist touch,” he wrote. “Vulnerable GOP candidates will be tied to those comments like dogs on leashes.”

 

On the right and left alike, those presumptuous enough to speak for The People pounded the table. “I guess I’m backwards and poor,” Republican Congressman Tim Burchett told the left-wing activist media outlet MeidasTouch. “I mean, how about we put one in Mar-a-Lago?” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested. “Let’s put a data center at Mar-a-Lago, and we’ll see how backwards and poor he is in response to that.” Indeed, there’s a data center right across the lagoon from Trump’s golf club, with more on the way.

 

The people criticizing Trump for his data center advocacy have the polls on their side. But Trump is betting that the hysteria these facilities have inspired will dissipate as quickly as it arose. On that, he has reason to be optimistic.

 

The pollster Scott Rasmussen’s surveys have shown that, while voters are apprehensive about data centers, they don’t necessarily need politicians to cater to their anxiety. Data centers are just not a pressing issue for most. Indeed, they rank at the bottom of voters’ priorities, well behind the economy, inflation, health care, national security, crime, education, immigration, gun laws, climate change, and abortion.

 

The polling does not appear to indicate that the public’s distaste for data centers extends to the politicians who support them or the firms that depend on them, some of which are the most trusted institutions in America. And when data centers are no longer a theoretical proposition, the voters exposed to them don’t resent them as much as the polling suggested they would.

 

“In an August survey from Heatmap Pro and Embold Research,” Vox.com’s Eric Levitz wrote, “just 15 percent of Americans said they would support a data center being built in their area, while 75 percent expressed opposition. One year earlier, 43 percent of respondents in the same poll had approved of nearby data center development, while just 42 percent opposed it.”

 

Today, it’s hard to find anyone who worries that fracking technology will make their faucets explode, or that their 5G mobile data will render them immunodeficient. Trump is betting that the most incendiary claims against data centers — that they consume and adulterate ungodly sums of water, that they are ungoverned by noise ordinances, that they subsist on ratepayer-subsidized electricity, or that they “vibrate at a low frequency that can bring up cortisol levels,” as one woman told CNN — will be forgotten with similar haste.

 

And when the moral panic subsides, the president believes that he will have a solid accomplishment in his pocket on which a potential successor could run. He might be right.

 

The data center buildout is reindustrializing the heartland in ways that tariffs never could. The demand for construction workers, pipe fitters, electricians, HVAC technicians, and other skilled professionals outstrips the nation’s supply. And these are not temporary jobs. These facilities will require maintenance and repairs, and they will probably expand to meet future demand. “It’s a very stable income, very stable lifestyle that you can provide for,” one construction equipment manufacturer told Fox News.

 

It’s not just blue-collar professionals who benefit from this construction boom. The exurban, suburban, and rural locales that invest in data centers have seen wild returns in the form of municipal tax revenue. Some of those municipalities are returning that largess to the people in the form of reduced tax rates. Some are even flirting with doing away with certain taxes altogether. And then there are the public facilities that data centers fund. What good liberal could gainsay the construction of a glittering new school financed by this industry? There’s something for everyone here.

 

For now, however, almost everyone hates these things. Communities are blocking their construction despite the promise they hold. Desperately needy local fire departments are rejecting quarter-million-dollar donations from the tech giants in deference to the “community’s concerns.” Working-class neighborhoods are particularly resistant to this construction boom despite the support for data centers increasingly expressed by national and local labor unions.

 

Those are powerful political currents. Trump doesn’t often swim against the populist tide, but he’s done so here. The president has wagered a lot on the assumption that the rewards of the data center boom will outweigh the concerns voters express today. And if Trump is right, the Republicans who are today racing to join Democrats at the front of the anti–data center parade will be grateful that their party has something to run on in 2028.