Trump says communities opposed to data centers want to be ‘backwards and poor’

President Trump said Monday that communities that do not want AI data centers will suffer economically.

“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 on Truth Social .

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” the president added. “The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them.”

Americans’ opposition to data centers in their local communities has grown, according to recent polling.

A survey Fox News conducted last month found 70 percent of respondents opposed the construction of a data center in their area to support AI. That included 60 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats.

One concern among Americans and lawmakers opposed to the construction of data centers is tied to the environmental and financial effects the facilities have.

A medium-sized data center can consume up to about 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes, equivalent to the annual water usage of roughly 1,000 households, an analyst at the nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study Institute reported last year .

Dozens of companies, including Meta, Amazon and Google, have agreed to pay for increased energy costs generated by their data centers through Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge.

But that has not stopped swing-state candidates of both parties from backing restrictions on data center development, as the issue has morphed into a hot political topic .

The president said earlier this month that Republican candidates opposing data centers is OK with him, acknowledging “some people feel differently” on the issue.

“I’m only saying that if I ran a community … if I was a mayor or if I was a governor in the state, I would want to have the data centers because they bring tremendous income,” he told reporters.

On Monday, Trump argued that if politicians and communities “kill the Golden Goose,” referring to AI, they “will only have [themselves] to blame.”

The president added, “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”