Trump Is Losing Touch With the Public

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One of the few issues that unites voters and politicians of both parties right now is data centers.

Three-quarters of Americans would oppose a data center being built near where they live, according to a new poll released last week by Heatmap Pro and Embold Research.

The two leading lights of the left, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, have sponsored a bill in Congress to create a temporary moratorium on new centers.

They have an unlikely ally in archconservative Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who said yesterday on ABC’s This Week that data-center companies “basically dug their own grave” and “got the backlash they deserve.” Standing against this consensus is Donald Trump.

The president remains a big booster of data centers.

“Communities that don’t take a data center—they’re making a mistake,” he said Thursday during an interview with his on-again, off-again lackey Michael Cohen.

“Data centers throw off tremendous amounts of jobs and money.” This was no one-off.

Trump had made several similar comments recently.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it, because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous,” Trump said last week—although he allowed that the sector could use “a little public-relations help.” This puts Trump, the most successful demagogue in American political history, in the unusual position of misreading, and opposing, a populist groundswell.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump took many stands that were unpopular among establishment politicians.

Some of these positions put him at odds not only with Democrats but also with most Republican elected officials.

Trump broke with Republicans in claiming that he would protect social-welfare programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and he broke a bipartisan consensus by attacking free-trade agreements and promising protectionism.