Donald Trump has spent recent weeks insisting that AI data centers are fantastic and every American should want to have one in their community. The president has even claimed that they make everyone rich, teasing the idea of a “dividend” that could be paid out in communities where they’re built.
But Trump seemed to contradict himself in a new interview published Thursday. The aspiring authoritarian leader admitted to Time magazine that he wouldn’t want to live next to a data center, echoing a common sentiment among Americans.
“The data centers. You explain it to the Americans. They make a fortune,” Trump told Time before saying a bunch of other things that aren’t true.
“They’re going to lower your taxes. They’re going to make your—look at Loudoun County, where they made one and a half billion dollars this year. They don’t know what to do with all that money. But if I spoke to the American people, and if I got a fair press on, which I never would, I would like to have data centers,” said Trump.
Loudoun County, Virginia, which has the largest concentration of data centers in the country at 233, has placed a moratorium on new construction because residents have complained of health problems, such as kids with major respiratory issues.
Then the president admitted the truth. “It doesn’t mean I want them right next to my house, but certainly I like them in my county. They show a data center, and I go up right next to a guy’s house, and I wouldn’t necessarily like that. Although his house is probably a hell of a lot more valuable,” said Trump.
Recent polling shows 71% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their communities, according to Gallup. More Americans would rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a data center. And Trump clearly understands this as something he needs to sell if he wants the AI-driven economy to stay afloat.
The Time interviewer pointed out that AI is the only thing that’s driving growth in the U.S. economy right now, and Trump took issue with that, of course. “No, what’s driving the growth is automobile plants are opening, many plants, Pfizer, all of the drug companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars,” said Trump.
In reality, many of the “plants” that Trump has announced haven’t materialized. On Monday, Trump announced that Mesabi Metallics was building a $15 billion steel plant in Iowa. But the company said it wouldn’t happen until 2030, and a local TV news station in the state found that no land has been purchased, no permits have been filed, and the so-called financial incentives for building in the state haven’t been agreed upon. Basically, nothing about the deal Trump was touting was real or guaranteed to happen.
And that’s the way that every topic should be approached whenever Trump talks, especially about AI. Much of the rest of the Time interview was classic Trump in the worst ways. He jumped from one idea to the next in his typically idiotic fashion, explaining that AI would be “good for medical,” and rejecting the idea that he’s at all responsible for inflation caused by the Iran War: “I’ve gotten much of it down.” When asked about his incredibly low poll numbers, the president whined, “Your numbers that you have are fake. The pollsters are corrupt.”
Trump suggested to Time that he might force the federal government to buy a significant stake in the AI companies as he did with Intel, and insisted several times that he wasn’t profiting from these deals. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has speculated that the big AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI want to be nationalized because it protects them from liability when their products are used to hack other companies. Asked about these types of cyberattacks, Trump seemed very confused.
Time: It was reported over the weekend that OpenAI agents breached federal government websites, commerce, etc. Can you just explain to us what is being done about that?
Trump: Yeah, but who breached it?
Time: OpenAI agents.
Trump: They’re not allowed to do that, and if they do that, they, you know, could have penalties that are not going to be acceptable to them.
Time: Can you tell us who you’re meeting with—go ahead.
Trump: I don’t have to destroy the industry. We’re making a lot of money with that industry. That industry is the industrial revolution, but bigger. It’s the internet, but much bigger. I don’t have to destroy that industry. By the way, you know, I had a very good meeting with President Xi. We get along, right? We talked about it not much, but a little bit. But I told him, I said, we don’t want—you know, we’re leading them pretty good. He knows that. And I said, “We don’t want to take this thing that we’ve done so well with and turn it off. I don’t want to turn it off. It’s tremendous amounts of money.”
It’s unclear if Trump was suggesting that the “agents” aren’t allowed to do something or OpenAI more broadly. The president clearly has no idea how anything works. Trump then rambled on about “Trump derangement syndrome,” and how he’s not to blame for the downsides of the economy.
When Trump was asked about the heads of the major AI companies, the president seemed obsessed with whether they were smart enough. And he pivoted into how smart he is, literally saying, “I have the highest of IQs.”
Time: Do you trust Sam Altman?
Trump: I like him. Do I trust him? Who do I trust? I like Sam Altman. Smart. Dario’s smart. They’re all smart. We’re dealing with a very high level of IQ. Very very high level. That’s a good thing. I like that. I like it. Did you see the story about my uncle?
Time: The one who taught at MIT?
Trump: I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I’m fine, and I understand that stuff. You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years, and you know, I’m a—I believe in genetics, frankly, and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would, because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers.
What I’ve done is I’ve created, for instance, these massive plants have no—We have no electricity in our grid. These massive plants now are allowed to make their own electric—
Again, classic Trump. It would be rather amusing if this wasn’t the most powerful guy in the country. Trump also wouldn’t rule out declaring a state of emergency and using the Insurrection Act during the midterm elections next month: “I’ve never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.”
At one point, the Time reporter asked Trump about Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky, and Trump just ignored the question and kept talking about pardons.
Time: You mentioned the Democrats will come after you if they win. Are you considering pardoning members of your administration prior to the end of your term?
Trump: Yeah, sure I’d do that.
Time: Is that something you would consider doing?
Trump: Well, Sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone. [Holds up pictures of White House] They’re actually—see, this is the way it looks now.
Time: Have you seen the videos of Mitch McConnell back in the Senate? Do you think he should resign because of his health condition?
Trump: It was a disappointment to a lot of Republicans. So that’s just—well, Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them? This ain’t gonna be much of a story. Here we are doing this. You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House? You know how I do, I do that out of my back pocket. I pay for a lot of it, but I fix it because the White House should look like that. It shouldn’t look like—if you would have stood in that balcony and looked at that wall, half the wall was falling. It’s actually dangerous. People are walking under, crap was falling off it all the time. Every time it rained, it was leaking, horrible. Now it’s perfect, and I would say that I should be given credit for fixing the White House because I’m also doing very well with the war. I’m doing very well with another war that we already won, Venezuela. Do you notice you haven’t asked me a question about Venezuela?
It’s clear that the president’s brain is deteriorating more and more with each passing day.
On a completely unrelated note, President Trump has unrestricted and sole launch authority for America’s nuclear weapons stockpile and could start a nuclear war anytime, day or night, within 20 minutes.
