Can Democrats make enough voters care about Trump's grift?

Democrats want to make corruption a potent campaign issue, but have long struggled to land their attacks on President Donald Trump’s flagrant self-enrichment and conflicts of interest. One challenge has always been the sheer amount of grift. Another has been turning abstract concerns about ethics into something that Americans feel affects them viscerally. 

If Democrats want to get voters to really care, they need to tie public grift to voters’ personal fears. Data centers might be the most salient way in. 

Data centers have become a third-rail political issue in 2026. Voters are fed up with the tax breaks, the soaring electricity costs, noise and possible environmental impacts of the facilities. A July Fox News poll found that 70% of respondents oppose building a data center in their area, including 53% of MAGA Republicans and 60% of Republicans, with energy and water use as the main source of concern. Data centers, which elected officials were clamoring for until recently, are now often seen as an extension of a greedy billionaire class by average voters struggling with inflation.

And in the meantime, President Donald Trump has raked in $2.2 billion in wealth, largely from cryptocurrency - which relies on data centers. Data centers are part of the Trump family’s investment portfolio. OpenAI president Greg Brockman gave $25 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. Then there’s xAI founder Elon Musk, who spent $250 million to elect Trump in 2024 and is set to spend $200 million this cycle to keep a Republican-led Congress. 

Trump, who ran as an avatar of working-class rage, now finds himself out of step with voters who are increasingly angry with the tech class that Trump and his family have firmly aligned themselves with. The president has made it clear he’s all in on the AI-linked facilities.

“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,” Trump said last week at a meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency and prediction markets at the White House. “And if you don’t take it, you’re going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it. So, I would say that maybe you can use a little public relations help. But if I were a governor or mayor, I would want that plant in my community and many of them are designed in a very beautiful way.”

This provides an opening for Democrats. But so far, Democrats’ attacks have been too broad to resonate - even though Trump’s obvious grift and self-dealing rate badly. 

According to a late July CNN poll, some 57% of Americans, including 62% of independents, say it’s a bad thing that Trump has earned more than $2 billion during his second term, much of it from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. Some 66% of respondents in the same poll said Trump doesn’t put “the good of the country above his personal gain.” And a recent Pew Research Center poll found that while economic issues are what voters want to hear most from congressional candidates, “government and ethics reform” is a distant second, with 9% of voters saying the issue is top of mind.

With primary season drawing to a close, Democrats are dialing up their corruption message. Democrats on the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee released a report earlier this month titled “The President Gains While Average Americans Lose,” which compared Trump’s $2.2 billion boost in 2025 (his most lucrative year ever) against the extra $3,500 in costs Americans are paying due to inflation. 

And in Ohio, which has more than 200 data centers, former Senator Sherrod Brown is hammering Senator Jon Husted over his ties to the facilities and billionaire friends that benefit from them.

In September, just as voters are paying more attention to the midterms, House Democrats are set to hold a hearing on accountability. Party leaders are already planning how they would investigate Trump’s unprecedented grift, including his massive crypto profits. 

“Tackling the affordability crisis alone will not be enough. We must also deliver accountability in the face of rampant corruption in Washington DC, the likes of which we have never seen in our nation’s 250-year history,” Hakeem Jeffries said at a speech last month in a Pennsylvania swing district. “So the day the American people put Democrats back in charge of Congress, here is our promise to you: We are going to hold the crooks accountable. Anyone who is stealing from the American people, screwing over the American people or shortchanging the American people is going to be held accountable beginning on Day One.” 

It’s a catch-all generic approach that makes sense in an election that will come down to swing voters in swing districts. But Americans have specific gripes about the seeming flood of data centers and the billionaires who will benefit as voters are stuck with higher costs. Trump and his family, as vocal tech industry cheerleaders and profiteers, should make it easy to connect the dots on corruption. Given the level of populist anger, perhaps Democrats can finally make it stick.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.