Joe Weisenthal
Markets journalist and Executive Editor of News for Bloomberg's digital brands, covering finance, macro and the mechanics of the economy.
“There's basically nobody who is data center pilled anymore. Abbott is the closest thing to it, the last man standing, and even he has been flinching for months, with these moratoria and 'we should do a little more environmental.' No one is going into the election saying 'I'm into data centers.'”
TBPN · Startups & Venture · November 2026
Context
Asked about the midterms, Weisenthal says the AI-relevant race to watch is the Texas governor's, and that data centers have become politically toxic for candidates of every stripe.
Transcript
AI world, you guys should just be paying attention to the Texas governors. Explain what's
going on. So I got it.
There's basically nobody who is data center pilled anymore, right? But Abbott is the closest thing to do. The last man standing. Yeah, basically. And even he isn't. Is he flinching a little bit? Yeah, he's been flinching for months. So it's like he's like, weird, like, moratoria that are like, oh, we should do a little more environmental. Yeah, you can't. It
wouldn't make sense for him to go into the election and super protein. Like, I was talking with a city council candidate who got endorsed by this crazy group in White Town, right? And we're like, that's a little suspicious. Like, right? Yeah. And he's like, we're just, you know, like, you know, I'm…
no one is going into the election saying I'm into data centers. Okay, okay. But some people might actually believe in things like progress and development and technology and stuff like that. You know, obviously so much of the tech world, so much of the manufacturing world, et cetera, sort of sees…
Yeah, yeah. I thought they built a crystal mall.
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