Trump Lashes Out at Data Centre Opponents: ‘You’ll End up Backwards and Poor’

Donald Trump has criticised opponents to AI data centres, saying “they want to end up being backwards and poor”.

In a post on Truth Social, the US president said: “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

Opposition to data centres is growing across the US ahead of November’s midterm elections. In the first three months of 2026, 75 data centre projects worth approximately $130bn were cancelled, according to research group Data Centre Watch.

Three quarters of Americans oppose data centres, according to a poll by environmental news organisation Heatmap Pro.

The opposition is notable for its breadth across the political spectrum. Leftwing Democrats Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a national moratorium, but opposition has also come from conservatives.

In Texas, Republican governor Greg Abbott came out against data centres in August, having previously called the state the “epicentre of AI development”. In Michigan, Republican senate candidate Mike Rogers has called for a moratorium on the construction of new data centres in the state.

While Trump has thrown his support behind data centres, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon has been mobilising Maga activists against AI.

Aaron Regunberg, a commissioning editor at left-leaning magazine New Republic, has written that the movement against data centres may “constitute the best opportunity we’ve had in generations to truly shake up American politics, by redirecting the partisan anger that oligarchic forces have long used to divide regular Americans and channeling that energy instead against the billionaires that are actually the cause of so many of our shared problems.”

Among Republicans who identify as Maga, 45% say building data centres is good, while 29% say it’s bad, according to a poll by the Economist and YouGov. Non-Maga Republicans are net negative on the data centres, with 31% saying building them is good and 35% saying it’s bad.

“The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them,” Trump added on Truth Social. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”