‘Always Been Backward and Poor’: Kentucky Trump Voters Tell CNN They’re Breaking With MAGA Over Data Centers and AI

Voters in Kentucky overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump in 2024, but things might be different this year, they told CNN in a segment that aired Thursday.

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan spoke to voters in Maysville, Kentucky, a small town described as a “Trump stronghold” with a population of just under 9,000 that borders the Ohio River and Appalachia (despite CNN’s categorization, Maysville is not officially listed by the Appalachian Regional Commission, but rather in the Outer Bluegrass region of the state). As O’Sullivan put it, data centers have “become a lightning rod” for the community since Mason County approved construction of a Meta hyperscale data center that will occupy more than 2,000 acres.

Locals are banding together in the community across political lines, O’Sullivan also reported.

“President Trump recently, I think he said, you know, communities that don’t want AI centers want to stay backward or something,” he said. “When you hear that, how do you feel?”

“I said, well, I guess I’m going to be backwards and poor,” answered activist Brooke McGowan. “But I also want to reiterate that not everything the president does do I agree with, but not everything my husband does, do I agree with.”

Max Moran, a Mason County resident, told O’Sullivan, “I’m Republican, but due to his stance, I feel he’s going to cost the Republicans, the House and the Senate. Maybe not by big margins. It might be very slim margins, but he needs to reverse his stance.”

Moran also pointed O’Sullivan to a landowner, Delsia Bare, who felt “coerced into signing these contracts to sell their land.”

Bare was joined by her mother, Ida Huddleston. The pair live on a 1,200 acre farm and gained nationwide attention when they declined $26 million to sell it for the data center.

“They come through the door around may the 2nd, 2025. They said. We want to buy your land for $35,000 an acre,” the pair explained. Though O’Sullivan pointed out that “technically” the contracts don’t reveal who exactly is purchasing the land, it’s largely believed that Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is behind the transactions.

Huddleston “goes through the contracts … with a fine-tooth comb,” Bare said. “[And] says, ‘I don’t care what you do, but get out of this.'”

Their land, the women said, represents one thing: “Freedom.”

“Life and freedom,” Huddleston added.

“Should I choose to, I could live totally off of this land that we’ve got,” Bare said. “I could, I wouldn’t have to be beholden to anything out there.”

Later in the segment, Huddleston acknowledged, “I voted for Trump [in 2024]… I have every time he’s run. I’d go question it now.”

After O’Sullivan asked the pair about Trump’s “backward and poor” comment, Bare insisted, “And that sort of pisses you off when you’re from Appalachia anyway. You’ve always been backward and poor.”

The push to keep data centers out of Appalachia and the surrounding areas is an uphill battle. Per writer Coyote Wallace, the region is populated by descendants of immigrants from a diverse range of countries and cultures. As he put it, “We, all of us born to these mountains, learned to fight, and while most of us learned to never look for trouble, we sure as sh*t sticks to cotton don’t run from it, either.”

The “influx of AI data centers that the Trump administration and its oligarch backers wish to see erected in our beloved mountains–data centers” represents “a new foe” in a string of enemies the region has bested, he added, and the fight is one they’ll continue “both for the sake of the people and the delicate ecology of Appalachia itself.”

Watch the above via CNN.

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