Trump says AI data center opponents want to be 'backwards and poor'

[MJF_Fan]

President Trump attacked opponents of AI data centers on Truth Social, saying communities opposing them would end up backwards and poor while communities that welcome them would be successful and rich, with lower taxes and jobs everywhere. He argued that killing what he called the golden goose would only hurt the communities themselves, and separately claimed China could not be happier watching the growing backlash against data centers in the US

The comments land as opposition to AI data centers has become a genuine and surprising issue heading into November's midterm elections, with Trump increasingly at odds with members of his own party on this specific issue. A Fox News poll from July found 70 percent of respondents opposed building a data center in their own area, including 60 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats, and candidates in at least 21 races across 18 states have already run television ads mentioning data centers this election cycle, roughly evenly split between both parties

Vice President Vance later tried to soften Trump's specific framing, telling reporters that 99 percent of the concern was really about the importance of data centers for AI rather than dismissing local concerns outright, even as the administration has separately gotten top tech firms to sign a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge meant to shield consumers from rising electricity prices. Curious what people think actually explains this level of genuinely broad, bipartisan opposition to data centers specifically

20260831 Trump Says Ai Data Center Opponents Want To Be Backwards And Poorwww.rfi.fr

[WearyScholar]

The voluntary pledge not to raise electricity prices deserves real scrutiny specifically, since voluntary commitments like that are famously easy for companies to quietly walk back later once the political spotlight has genuinely moved elsewhere entirely

[Louise84]

Twenty one competitive races already running ads on this specific issue shows it's genuinely become an actual electoral factor rather than just background noise or a niche concern. Worth watching closely which specific framing, jobs and growth versus rising bills and noise complaints, actually wins out with real voters in November

[Scholes22]

Seventy percent opposition including a majority of his own party is a genuinely striking number that a golden goose social media post honestly isn't going to meaningfully move in the other direction. Feels like a real disconnect between the rhetoric being used here and where actual public opinion has already firmly settled

[BosonSpark]

China supposedly being happy about domestic American opposition to data centers feels like a rhetorical stretch honestly, using a genuinely convenient rival to try reframing what's mostly a purely local set of very practical concerns about noise and electricity costs into some kind of broader geopolitical framing instead

[WildManSteve40]

Vance's walk back attempt is honestly the more politically telling detail buried in this whole story than Trump's original social media post itself.

Suggests real internal awareness within the administration that the original blunt framing was landing pretty badly with actual voters on the ground