Noah Rothman writes for National Review Online about President Donald Trump’s “big bet” on data centers.
When the paranoid style in American politics gets in the way of the Trump administration’s initiatives (and only then), this White House shows little tolerance for pop conspiracy theorizing.
In recent weeks, the president and his allies have been giving the “Epstein files” treatment to the most salacious claims about data centers. In an interview last week with his formerly estranged fixer, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump touted the national data-center development over which he has presided. Not only did the president assure his interlocutor that the “tremendous amounts of jobs and money” they create are desirable, he also tried to bust some of the more popular myths about data centers promoted by their opponents.
This week, the president trotted out a more confrontational version of that message. “Communities that don’t take a data center, they’re making a mistake,” Trump said. He took that line of criticism further still in a post on Truth Social: “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.” The communities that “want to be successful and rich,” by contrast, will “let Data Reign.”
With that, Trump uncorked a cascade of feigned outrage among aspiring populists who channeled what they imagine to be the public’s passions.
Not since Hillary Clinton infamously put half of Trump’s supporters into a “basket of deplorables” has a major political figure so carelessly slandered the public, the commentator Ron Fournier argued. “Trump has lost his populist touch,” he wrote. “Vulnerable GOP candidates will be tied to those comments like dogs on leashes.”
On the right and left alike, those presumptuous enough to speak for The People pounded the table. …
… The people criticizing Trump for his data center advocacy have the polls on their side. But Trump is betting that the hysteria these facilities have inspired will dissipate as quickly as it arose. On that, he has reason to be optimistic.
