President Donald Trump has heard the complaints from Americans across the country who don’t want data centers in their communities. And he has a simple message: Shut your mouth, you stupid rubes.
“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 wrote Monday on Truth Social.
But he wasn’t done there. The president wrote that data centers make people rich and then tried to suggest it was good for China as a geopolitical adversary if Americans held up data center construction.
“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them,” Trump continued.
“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!” wrote Trump, signing off with his name, a signal that’s intended to mean he typed it himself rather than having his assistant Natalie Harp write it.
Trump frequently expresses contempt for the American people, including his own supporters. But using the term “backwards and poor” is one of the more explicit cases of the billionaire president showing off his hatred for the common person.
Data center builders have frequently tried to claim that China is behind the protests that have cropped up nationwide. Kevin O’Leary, the reality TV personality and data center investor, made the claim without evidence before acknowledging that he simply doesn’t have any evidence. Two groups in Utah that are fighting data center construction, Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies, have sued O’Leary for defamation.
Data centers are wildly unpopular in the U.S., according to the most recent polling. A whopping 71% of Americans oppose data center construction in their community, according to Pew Research, making them even less popular than building nuclear power plants in a community.
Even Truth Social users, people who are only on the platform because it’s owned by the president, expressed their displeasure with Trump’s attitude on Monday. “I have to disagree with this one. AI is evil. The world will regret it in the long run. It’s already making people lazy and dumbed-down,” wrote one user with the name Ultra MAGA Prayer Warrior.
Another user with the handle @ivotedforafelon, expressed concern about high energy bills that often come when a data center is constructed nearby, writing, “I don’t think it’s so much that we are against data centers. What we are against is our electric bill shooting through the roof and our water supply going low. And this is happening. Every state Wheels and deals with these data centers differently and some without a care in the world about our electric bills.”
Still another user tried a gentle approach while criticizing Trump’s take on data centers, opening with the word “respectfully” and talking about how important it is to protect natural resources for future generations:
Please listen to your voters!!! You are losing many of your staunch supporters over this issue!! Thank you for all that you do for this GREAT country but we respectfully disagree with you on this very important issue!!
Most Republicans know this is a losing issue for them. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who previously boasted about data centers in his state, has backpedaled recently and admits that Chinese propaganda is not the reason that most Americans oppose their construction. X, a platform that has staked its future on massive data centers to power Grok with xAI, claimed last week that it uncovered a large Chinese bot network that was pushing anti-data center messages.
Vice President JD Vance was asked about Trump’s comments on data centers Monday and tried to suggest that Trump had said a lot of things he didn’t actually say in his Truth Social post.
JD Vance: “If you build a data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out. If that is happening, I don’t think data centers are that controversial”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 31, 2026 at 8:27 AM
“Well, what the President said about data centers is they’re an important part of the AI economy. When people build them, they have to build the power plants along with the data centers,” said Vance.
The Vice President went on to insist that 99% of the backlash against data centers was centered on higher utility bills and that companies should take advantage of the way that this administration has deregulated things in order to build more power capacity.
“If you build a data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out. And if that is happening, I don’t think the data centers are that controversial,” said Vance.
