Donald Trump Takes on MAGA Over Data Centers

Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft explores a crucial topic in the current midterm season: data centers. If you have a question or insight for the column, don’t hesitate to email Molly at [email protected] or reach out securely on Signal at mollytaft.76.

Molly McCann Sanders shares similarities with many women who contributed to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. A pro-life Catholic residing in Texas, she holds conservative views on immigration and has a deep aversion to eminent domain, the government’s ability to take private property for public benefit.

Sanders, who leads the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund founded by Phyllis Schlafly, refers to herself as “a crunchy MAHA mom” and has been closely monitoring data center developments.

“I’m alarmed by the idea that these data centers can come in and pollute,” she expresses. “I’m not an expert on data centers or technology. However, I remain skeptical and cautious, wanting to proceed carefully.”

While she supports Trump, she states, “I believe he’s mistaken about data centers.” She perceives the GOP’s attempt to appeal to what she calls “the laptop class”—young, tech-savvy men—during the Republican midterm convention earlier this month as a major miscalculation with the elections approaching.

McCann Sanders isn’t isolated in her views. More than 60 percent of Americans, including 47 percent of Republicans, expressed opposition to data center constructions in a recent poll by The New York Times. In August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee distributed a private memo to AI companies highlighting voter concerns regarding data centers, warning that “campaign or party committees cannot repair the toxic brand of an entire industry.” Last week, GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio informed party candidates that “unconditional support for more AI data centers is a losing stance.”

Nonetheless, the GOP confronts a significant obstacle: Trump himself. In recent weeks, under increasing scrutiny regarding his policies and backing for the industry, Trump has reinforced his defense of both data centers and AI. In a late August Truth Social post, he claimed that only communities wanting to be “backwards and poor” would reject data centers.

Last week, he released another wave of posts promoting AI data centers. Users on his Truth Social platform responded negatively. An analysis by The New York Times of numerous responses indicated that anti-data-center and anti-AI remarks—coming even from dedicated MAGA accounts—outnumbered supportive comments by four to one.

Sanders admits she occasionally “looks past” Trump’s more extreme statements but cannot ignore his pro-data-center messages.

“That’s not the appropriate approach,” she comments on the “backwards and poor” post. “We have legitimate concerns. There are real issues.”

My colleague Hugo Lowell, who covers the White House and writes our Inner Loop newsletter, notes he’s not surprised by Trump’s stance. “He’s optimistic about AI,” he remarks. “He’s been informed that restricting data center growth equates to limiting computing power, which means the US could fall behind China.”

The competition with China is echoed publicly by tech advocates and White House supporters, including former White House AI czar David Sacks and investor Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir. The latter recently debated Steve Bannon’s tech editor Joe Allen—whom I profiled last month—at an auxiliary event during the convention. Sanders says that this exchange between Lonsdale and Allen was the only instance she heard data centers discussed at the entire midterm convention.