President Trump said Monday that communities that do not want AI data centers will suffer economically. “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…
Page A2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 31 August 2026
Trump declares Reflecting Pool 'almost completely fixed,' calls data-center opponents 'backwards and poor'
As it ran on the front
THE RECORD, CORRECTED
Let's be clear about what the President actually said, because the wires have been running the two-word soundbite with none of the context, and the context is: infrastructure takes time. The Reflecting Pool restoration is 'almost completely fixed,' a technical phrase meaning nearly done, essentially finished, on the threshold of completion — a status update, not a confession. Presidents have always spoken plainly about public works. This is transparency. This is —…
…(cont) Did I say transparency? What I mean is, 'almost completely fixed' has described that pool for a while now, and nobody's asked how long, and that's a legitimate question this desk is choosing not to answer today.
Now, the other matter. When the President said communities opposing new data centers want to be 'backwards and poor,' he was making an economic argument. Data centers bring jobs. Data centers bring investment. Data centers bring server farms running around the clock off the same grid these towns have depended on for generations, which is, again, an economic argument, and if the people living next to the substation don't see it that way, that's a communications problem on their end, not a —
Actually, no. That's not right either. The people asking questions about their power bill are not being backwards. They are doing the one thing citizens are supposed to do, which is ask what a facility that size is going to cost them personally, and the answer the White House gave them was a label.
Here is what this desk can confirm: the pool is not finished. The data centers are being built regardless of what the neighbors think. And when a President has two things to mention on the same news day — a shallow decorative body of water, and a private industry expansion pushed through over local objection — he chose to hedge on the pool and go flat-out certain about the objection.
That is not spin. That is just the order he said it in.
This desk stands by the President's remarks in full, both of them, whichever ones those turn out to be.
“Guy spends however long buffing a pond so it reflects real nice, then turns around and calls the people fighting the data center next door 'backwards and poor.' That's the whole racket: dress the vanity project up as progress, and call the ones asking about their water bill the backwards ones. Watch the pool if you want, but watch your rate hike closer.”
“The Reflecting Pool restoration is on schedule, or it will be, and 'almost completely fixed' is a normal thing a President says about a public-works project — did I say normal, I meant unprecedented, which is what we've been saying since day one. And 'backwards and poor' was about regional economic growth, not about the specific people who happen to live next to the specific data center, who are, again, growth-adjacent.”
The receipts
President Trump on Sunday said the improvements to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are "almost completely fixed." Trump shared a photo of the grass near the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, where an etching of "86 47" was…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.