Republican consultants appear flabbergasted that President Donald Trump can remain so stubbornly clueless in supporting something so obviously despised by his own voters.
According to Daily Mail, strategists are panicking that Trump keeps aping arguments from leading AI and technology executives about data centers, despite the issue being pure poison to the voting public — and Republicans in particular.
Consultants cringed when Trump called data center critics “backwards and poor,” one Republican political strategist told the Daily Mail.
“His team has convinced him to go all in for AI, all in for data centers,” the strategist said. “He's in a bubble.”
The worst-case scenario, one political strategist told the Daily Mail, is that disillusioned rural Republicans stay home during the midterms, giving Democrat voters the advantage.
Another strategist, soldiering on with optimism, suggested Trump’s vehement defense of data centers and AI had little to do with the president’s wooden-headed contempt of voters, but because he was being led into dark places by wealthy tech leaders.
“Trump is increasingly becoming the face of data centers and AI because tech executives have failed to communicate the benefits of the industry,” according to Daily Mail.
'AI and tech people all think they are insanely smart, but they are not good at politics. They don't know how to sell the issue,' the strategist told the Daily Mail.
But Trump was “war-gaming” the data center and AI issues as far back as July, the Daily Mail reported after a private strategy dinner at Washington's Four Seasons hotel.
In that work session, the tech industry ended up urging candidates to stress that data centers should 'pay for their own power and water' and ensure that any leftovers flow back to communities. But Trump's social media posts contained none of those talking points, instead taking a confrontational and dismissive approach. Trump instead preferred to write off the growing Republican backlash rather than addressing or alleviating concerns.
“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump raged in a message on social media, according to Daily Mail. The president said that such centers would help create jobs and lower taxes in communities, urging Americans to “let data reign.”
But opposition to data centers is so widespread that some GOP lawmakers — especially those seeking reelection in competitive swing states and swing districts — are joining Democrats in vigorously campaigning against them. And the issue is becoming a deciding factor in precarious Senate and House races in places like Texas and other former GOP strongholds as Democrats nail Republicans on the sensitive issue and smear it with Trump’s face.
