The latest nightmare scenario for the Republican Party may be a deeply unpopular president – Donald Trump – showing up in Dallas next week at the midterm convention to advocate again for a deeply unpopular cause – the construction of data centers across America.

Data centers, the sprawling warehouses for computer infrastructure supporting the development of artificial intelligence, have emerged in this year's midterm elections as an unusual area of bipartisan agreement. Republicans and Democrats seeking state and federal offices have reversed course on projects that were once pitched as economic revival engines but are now seen as dangerous flashpoints for voter anger.

Trump, by contrast, shrugs off that voter anger and lectures Americans to just accept the data centers they find so unacceptable. And then Vice President JD Vance – likely with one eye on November's midterms and the other on the 2028 presidential election – tries to play clean-up for his boss.

Trump's 'backwards and poor' comments on data centers get bipartisan rebuke

Trump's declaration on Aug. 31, via a social media post, that "The only reason that communities throughout........

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