"There's so much money to be made for Ohio. You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China," Trump told supporters at the Butler-Vandalia Student Activity Center outside Dayton, where he urged voters to back Republican Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in the November 3 midterm elections.
Trump repeatedly told the crowd in the battleground state to act as though he himself were on the ballot. "Please pretend that I'm on the ballot, and you need to turn out for a midterm victory," he said, arguing it was essential for Republicans to hold their majorities in the House and Senate.
A warning about China — and electricity bills
Trump tied the data-center buildout to the global race over artificial intelligence, saying the United States was ahead of China in what he repeatedly called "superintelligence."
"China doesn't want to see us," he said. "We're beating China" in the technology race, as he argued against turning data centers away from the United States.
At the same time, he backed legislation sponsored by Husted, the Ratepayer Protection Act, which he said would "stop data centers from raising electricity costs and require them to pay their own way."
Trump vowed to sign the bill "into law immediately within 24 hours" if Republicans prevail. The Senate tried to advance the measure this week, but it was blocked by nearly all Democrats, according to news reports.
A political fault line in the midterms
Data centers have become a toxic political issue across the country, drawing bipartisan opposition from voters concerned about electricity prices, farmland, and water supplies.
An April poll from Bowling Green State University found most of the 1,000 Ohio respondents believe data centers are bad for home energy costs and the environment, with more than 70 percent favoring a temporary pause on new centers until the effects are better studied.
Republican strategists have raised concerns that support for the facilities could hurt Husted in his campaign against Democrat Sherrod Brown. Ads opposing Husted have blamed him for the spread of data centers in Ohio, and Brown wrote on X that Husted "gave billions in tax breaks to Big Tech" and is now "making Ohioans foot the bill."
According to the Associated Press, the crowd at the rally was far more muted during the data-center portion of Trump's speech than at other moments. "Data centers benefit local communities," Trump insisted. "We want them."
"Pretend I'm on the ballot"
Trump used the rally for an economic victory lap, pointing to a $400 million Stellantis investment in Toledo, an $850 million Electra aerospace investment near Springfield, and Bayer's planned $2.2 billion pharmaceutical campus near Columbus. "Your state is booming," he told the crowd. "Every state is booming."
The Ohio appearance comes as data centers have grown into one of the defining economic issues of the midterms.
Days earlier, the CEO of Amazon Web Services pushed back against backlash over data-center expansion, saying the company no longer uses non-disclosure agreements with local governments — a sign the industry is feeling the political heat.
Trump, by contrast, has become one of the facilities' most vocal champions: the United States, he argued, cannot cede artificial intelligence to China.
