Trump claim shredded as demonstrably false by local TV station

President Donald Trump boasted this week that every resident living near a Louisiana data center got a $10,000 check, but the state’s economic development agency and the people living next to the project say no such payments exist.

The 80-year-old president made the claim Monday to Fox2 Detroit’s Roop Raj, but investigative reporter David Hammer of WWL-TV in New Orleans looked into the issue and found no evidence of those payments to anyone.

“So, we had a community in Louisiana and they were really, you know, opposed (to the data center) and everything else,” Trump told Raj. “All of a sudden, they got paid $10,000. Everybody living in the community got a check for $10,000, and everybody loved it. They said, ‘Where do we do our next data center?’”

Louisiana Economic Development, which brokers the state’s big data center projects, told WWL it isn’t aware of any direct payments to nearby residents.

“If there were $10,000 payments, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops,” said spokesperson Emma Wagner.

Wagner guessed he was thinking of bonuses of up to $50,000 paid to Richland Parish public school teachers, funded by a surge in sales tax revenue during construction of Meta’s massive Hyperion data center in the tiny community of Holly Ridge.

Holly Ridge residents Tatiana Thompson and Diane Cobb, who have opposed the project, told WWL they haven’t received any payments from Meta or anyone else.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to clarify Trump’s remarks.

Raj had asked Trump about data centers in Michigan, where Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee in a razor-tight U.S. Senate race, has called for a one-year moratorium on new projects. When Trump brought up the supposed Louisiana checks, Raj noted, “In Saline (Mich.), they’re not getting paid.”

Trump did correctly note that taxes are falling in some communities hosting data centers. In West Feliciana Parish, construction of a Hut 8 data center has driven a 10 percent jump in sales tax revenue, allowing the parish to cut tax rates for residents and businesses.

The president also took credit for forcing tech companies to generate their own electricity.

“The data centers, because of what I did … they make their own electricity,” he said. “So, we don’t take from the electricity, we give it back.”

Entergy Louisiana is seeking approval to build more than 5 gigawatts of new power plants to supply the Hyperion site.

The utility says its 20-year deal with Meta could save other customers $4 billion, but it has kept most of the details secret, and opponents worry some of the $20 billion in new infrastructure costs will be passed on to ratepayers.