There is a grim, delicious irony in watching the self-proclaimed master of the universe realize that he cannot actually negotiate with the laws of thermodynamics. In the grand, crumbling theater of American politics, we are currently witnessing Act Three of a particularly dull tragedy: The President of the United States versus The Light Switch. It appears that Donald Trump, a man whose understanding of infrastructure is usually limited to the gold plating on a hotel faucet, has stumbled upon a terrifying reality. The digital utopia promised by his oligarch friends in Silicon Valley requires electricity—vast, gluttonous oceans of it—and the American grid is currently held together by little more than rust, prayers, and the lingering ghost of the New Deal.

The specific source of the President’s anxiety is not the existential threat of climate change or the structural integrity of the republic, of course. Those are European concerns, fit only for dreary conferences in Brussels. No, Mr. Trump is worried about datacenters for the only reason that ever penetrates his chaotic orbit: the polls. Specifically, the November elections. It seems it has finally dawned on the administration that while the American voter is willing to tolerate a great deal of clownish authoritarianism and cultural vandalism, their patience evaporates the moment the utility bill spikes to cover the cost of training a chatbot to write bad poetry.

To mitigate this, we were treated on January 13 to a classic piece of performative statecraft. Trump and the president of Microsoft stood together to announce a “deal.” The tech giant, in a display of corporate benevolence that surely had nothing to do with avoiding regulatory decapitation, agreed to pay “more” for its datacenters. No tax breaks, no discounted electricity rates in the quaint towns they intend to colonize with humming server farms. They will pay full price. One can almost hear the applause from the cheap seats. Look! The populist hero is making the nerds pay their fair share! It is a brilliant political maneuver, provided you don’t think about it for longer than four seconds.

The problem, which requires a level of nuance usually absent from American discourse, is that money is not electricity. You can pile stack after stack of fiat currency in front of a transformer, but it will not generate a single kilowatt-hour. The issue at hand is one of supply and demand, the very capitalist mechanism Americans claim to worship yet fail to understand. The demand from AI and datacenters is exponential, threatening to consume the grid whole. The supply, however, is being strangled by the very man complaining about the cost.

This is where the satire writes itself, leaving people like me with very little to do. While demanding that Big Tech stop driving up prices for the common man, Trump is simultaneously curbing the renewable energy projects that are the only viable way to rapidly increase the electricity supply. It is a level of cognitive dissonance that would be impressive if it weren’t so destructive. He wants the American dominance of the AI sector—the shiny, futuristic prestige—but he despises the windmills and solar panels necessary to power it because they offend his aesthetic sensibilities or his donors in the fossil fuel industry. He is effectively trying to run a Ferrari on fumes while banning gas stations because he finds the pumps unsightly.

The result is a perfect storm of bureaucratic incompetence and populist schizophrenia. By blocking renewable expansion, he ensures that electricity remains scarce. By ensuring scarcity while demand skyrockets, he guarantees high prices. By guaranteeing high prices, he necessitates these theatrics with Microsoft to pretend he is “solving” the problem. It is the economic equivalent of sawing off your own leg and then congratulating yourself on the discount you negotiated for the crutches.

One must appreciate the exasperation of the “experts” in the room, watching a political party collide with physical reality. The datacenters are coming. They do not care about political affiliation; they only care about voltage. If the grid cannot support them because the administration is busy fighting a culture war against wind turbines, the costs will inevitably be passed down to the consumer, regardless of how many “agreements” are signed on television. The average American, sitting in the dark or staring at a utility bill that costs more than their car payment, may find their enthusiasm for the party waning. And that, finally, is the only current that creates a spark in the White House: the fear that when the lights go out, the voters might finally see clearly.