Trump's Seen The Data Center Polling – And He Still Supports Them

Donald Trump knows the polling on data centers is bad. He’s making the case for them anyway.

“He looks at the polling. He looks at what people are saying,” a senior White House official told POLITICO. “Polling isn’t necessarily great on data centers, but it’s incumbent upon us to explain our position. I think that’s part of what he was trying to do.”

For the president, data centers are the “Golden Goose,” as he put it on Truth Social Monday. They’re one of the few investment engines humming in an otherwise sputtering economy, and a cornerstone of the administration’s strategic AI arms race with China.

Trump is defending them because they’re also an albatross around Republicans’ necks heading into the November election.

And no small part of that position, as is often the case with Trump, is economics. The bright spot in construction is increasingly data centers, not the factories Trump promised through his push to reshore manufacturing.

“Trump is married to data centers no matter what because it’s the only real job creator,” one former Trump administration said. That former official, and others quoted in this article, were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the controversial topic.

Telling communities they’d end up “backwards and poor” if they rejected data centers is the most blunt he’s been on the issue as Republicans rapidly abandoned ship amid widespread public backlash.

And expect the president to “continue leveraging the data center boom to deliver real benefits for working families and small businesses,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement.

Trump called Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s decision to pause approvals for new data centers “a mistake” last month, before later telling reporters, “If a Republican’s against a data center, that’s OK with me.”

Now, as Republicans from Mike Rogers in Michigan to Ken Paxton in Texas race to distance themselves from data centers, he’s actively making the opposing case.

Despite the split, Trump doesn’t believe Republican candidates are crossing a red line in staking out a more skeptical position, the senior White House official added.

Still, he's being more vocal about his own stance.

“Data centers are a big topic of conversation when it comes to the midterms, when it comes to what people are concerned about, so he’s not going to shy away from letting everyone know exactly how he feels.”

Those feelings are “very sincere,” one person close to the White House said. “It’s not the reflexive populist thing to do. And he’s seen the polling.”

But the reflexive populist thing is never far from Trump’s orbit. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told POLITICO, “the Data Center controversy is a wedge issue for the populist right.”

“It’s far deeper than electrical bills — it’s about the ‘Broligarchs’ who overplayed their hand and overstayed their welcome,” Bannon said. “You stand with them and you stand to lose — in 60 days and in two years.” Bolstering Bannon’s case, a POLITICO Poll from July found support for data centers among those who voted for the president in 2024 fell from 45 percent to 34 percent in just six months.

Trump isn’t eliciting rave reviews from even the industry itself. One data center executive said Trump failed to lay out “a well thought-out plan at the national level” — like some sort of profit-sharing proposal — to halt the hemorrhaging of data center support.

“I think it is a significant marker — of panic,” the executive said. “Short of major economic incentives, I think the backlash will get worse — not better.”

Jason Calacanis, the prominent Silicon Valley investor, tech entrepreneur and co-host of the “All-In” podcast had a particularly cynical read of the growing data-center backlash.

“Right after the midterms, politicians will flip their positions back to being pro growth and pro data center… they just have make it past November.”

Alex Gangitano, Dasha Burns, Adam Wren, Brendan Bordelon and Will Steakin contributed to this report.

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