Commerce Secretary who confirmed data centers 'suck water' now calls the same fact 'propaganda.'

…(cont) Here's where it gets confusing for a man with one calendar on the wall. The Secretary's "propaganda" line is dated September 2nd. Two days before that — August 31st, the last day of the month — the President posted that any town that won't take a data center is going to end up "backwards and poor." Different months, technically, by a single day. I checked it twice because I didn't trust myself the first time.

So I've got a Secretary telling the country the water complaint is manufactured, and a President telling the same country, in that same stretch of days, that the towns saying no are headed for poverty. A man doesn't warn you about the cost of turning something down unless the something costs somebody, somewhere, real money — or real water. I'm only asking. Nobody's handed me the transcript that settles it.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez had a thought on the matter too — said if the President's so sure these places are such a gift, he ought to put one in at his own house down in Florida. I don't have Mar-a-Lago's water bill. Nobody's handed me that page either.

I went out to the yard with the hose Thursday — raincoat still on the passenger seat, sky clear enough I didn't need it — and ran the water for exactly as long as it takes me to walk to the mailbox and back. Little over a minute. I know because I counted it. It's not nothing, water, when you're the one paying for it by the gallon. I don't have the number for what one of these facilities runs through in a day. I have what my hose does in sixty-some seconds, and I have a Secretary of Commerce calling the whole concern "propaganda" on national television, and I have the fact that I am not on national television.

Both parties, I'm told, are running ads about this now — millions of dollars worth, pointed at each other, over the same set of buildings. Which is its own kind of answer, isn't it. When two sides that agree on nothing agree to spend real money arguing about the same fact, somebody down the line usually believes the fact is real.

Oh — before you go. I almost walked off with it still in my pocket. I said I'd only need the word once, and I'm sorry, because I told you I'd be back for it, and here it is: propaganda.