1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

Trump has given up on persuasion entirely. What’s left is bullying, and it’s a sign of weakness, not strength. Data centers have been a point of leverage for local communities in their arguments to preserve where they live. Trump just degraded their concerns by calling them “backwards and poor.” On Monday, facing a growing revolt in communities across the country over the AI data centers being built in their backyards, President Trump got on Truth Social and delivered his message to the people worried about it. “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,” he wrote. If they don’t fall in line, he added, “you will only have yourselves to blame.” Backwards and poor. That’s what the Trump called the Americans concerned about a real issue in their own hometowns. And this response tells us all we need to know about where this man and this presidency have ended up. Trump has used the advent of Truth Social to draw ire to his political opponents, and as of yesterday, insult millions of his own voters. Let me start with the actual policy issue. Data centers are not some fringe concern cooked up by activists. Roughly seven in ten Americans say they don’t want one built in their community, and that opposition cuts clean across party lines. People are worried about their electricity bills going up. They’re worried about the staggering amounts of water these facilities pull from local supplies. They’re worried about what happens to the character of a place when a hulking, humming warehouse the size of a stadium goes up next to the neighborhood. More than 500 localities have already stalled these projects. New York passed a statewide moratorium. This is one of the rare issues where the farmer in Texas and the retiree in upstate New York are saying exactly the same thing. Now, you can disagree with them. There’s a real argument to be made about American competitiveness, about jobs, about not ceding the future of this technology to China. If you believe in data centers, then go make that case. But here’s the thing about making a case: it requires you to actually respect the people you’re trying to convince. It requires you to show up, listen to their concerns, and treat them like adults whose worries are legitimate even when you think they’re mistaken. That is what leadership looks like. And it is precisely what Donald Trump is incapable of