Trump Forgot How to Do Politics—if He Ever Knew How
Still, the nicknames did tend to at least distill something about the person he was describing (Rubio was weak, Franken was weird, Kasich was a loser) that was easy to compute among his audience: Republican voters favored him to Rubio and Kasich and were predisposed to dislike Al Franken, a Democrat. Trump has certainly made Republicans more in favor of corruption and law-breaking, but has seen GOP support for his war in Iran and tariffs—which were never especially popular to begin with—drop in recent months. With data centers and AI, he’s starting with a deficit that he doesn’t seem able to surmount.
The biggest surprise here is that Trump is willing to go out on such a limb on the issue. He certainly didn’t take any similar stand in his first term, one that was so at odds with the views of even his core supporters. That he’s doing so is a testament, certainly, to just how badly he has screwed up the economy, which is now perversely dependent on technologies that a clear majority of Americans are either skeptical of or outright loathe. But it also reveals that the president is, at 80 years old, more out of touch with his base than ever. Or put more simply, Trump is now plainly bad at politics.
The big winner here, obviously, is the Democrats. Trump’s unpopular stances are not just a political boost that could turn a blue wave into a tsunami; they also give cover to Democrats as they figure out where to stand on AI and data centers. The party has failed to articulate a clear position, as it’s seemingly torn between the potential for job creation, the party’s fraying but still present ties to Silicon Valley, and the public’s growing anger toward the tech giants. While some Democrats—mostly progressives and populists—have called for moratoriums on data center construction, the party’s leaders largely haven’t followed suit. Ordinarily that messaging incoherence would pose a political problem. But it isn’t, for now, thanks to the Hoax Buster in the White House.
