The Felon Has Lost Touch With the Public

Having launched a trade war with Canada that will likely harm both businesses and consumers in Midwest states the GOP needs to carry in the upcoming mid-term elections, issued threats to tear down the Kennedy Center  if he isn't allowed to renovate it and add his name to the building, threatening to rename Lake Ontario, and allowing the Iran war (a war the Felon chose to start against the advice of the intelligence services) to continue to harm American consumers, the Felon seems more and more detached from both objective reality and the views of the American public.  When faced with horrible poll numbers, the Felon simply says they are "fake" - his fragile, narcissist ego cannot accept the reality he is no longer popular even with a considerable portion of his base - and remains focused on anything and everything other than what matters to voters. Even the timing of the trade war launched against Canada gives the impression of being in part a distraction from continued negative news about the Iran war which he has lost while strengthening Iran in the long run. Simply put, Americans do not want data centers in their backyards or his ballroom, victory arch, and ever more gaudy renovations to historic buildings and venues. They want lower prices and economic stability, things the Felon is ignoring and/not delivering. A piece at The Atlantic looks at this disconnect:

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 [the Felon] 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,”

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. . . . . On these matters (as well as on his willingness to encourage and participate in gutter racism), Trump demonstrated that a big constituency existed for views that other politicians had deemed electoral liabilities.

Data centers’ political arc has been different. Initially, many officials seemed to back the centers, following exactly Trump’s logic: They offered jobs and tax benefits. But as public opinion turned—driven by a mix of backlash to AI in general, environmental concerns, worries about energy prices, and old-fashioned NIMBYism—politicians changed their view as well.

Why has [the Felon] Trump missed the shift? Presumably one reason is that he is surrounded by advisers and tech executives such as David Sacks and Larry Ellison, who are major boosters of and players in the industry. Tech companies invested heavily in Trump at the start of his second administration, lavishing him with gifts, including a gold-plated bauble and donations to projects such as his inauguration and his ballroom, and Trump has reciprocated by taking policy stances that benefit them.

Trump has always tended to adopt the latest thing he’s heard, no matter what it is. He has been willing to alienate corporate interests in the past—when he saw some political upside. But he is not hearing from voters who might alert him to how unpopular data centers are. . . . as his energy sinks, his travel schedule gets lighter, and security makes events more challenging, Trump is getting out less.

Though his stump speeches dragged on for hours, Trump was carefully attuned to audience attention and what did and didn’t work.

The president has always been susceptible to fake news and bad at filtering information, but rallies provided a gut check about his base, if not about the broader national reality. Now Trump isn’t even receiving that kind of information. One of his major conduits for information is Natalie Harp, a sycophantic aide who isn’t interested in exposing Trump to criticism. He could read public-opinion data, but as his own approval sinks, he has taken to saying (and may well believe) that polls are fake.

As his world shrinks, Trump’s populist touch has faded. Despite being elected twice on an antiwar platform, he’s launched attacks on Venezuela and Iran. As the Iran war has gotten bogged down, he’s been incapable of reading the public mood. He has dismissed voter frustration over rising fuel costs, saying “I don’t even think about” gas; he previously called affordability a “hoax.” In response to reports that American sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln were struggling with a long deployment, Trump said they hadn’t been deployed “nearly long enough.” And the collapse of trade talks with Canada on Friday threatens Republican prospects in border states including Michigan and Ohio.

Each of these cases represents a growing gap between Trump and his base, but none is as ironic as Trump’s stance on data centers. The AI facilities store terabytes of data, but the president can’t get access to the information about them that he needs.