President Donald Trump took time out of his hours-long Cabinet meeting on Tuesday to highlight Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest project.
The president held up a printout provided by Zuckerberg showing the size of Facebook’s new Artificial Intelligence data center, The Daily Mail reported.
“This is something given to me by Mark Zuckerberg,” Trump said while displaying an outline of the sprawling facility on paper.
Trump stated that the new complex under construction in Louisiana will encompass an area more than four-fifths the size of Manhattan. He claimed the facility would cost $50 billion.
“Actually Mark is building four of them,” Trump added. “But look at that – that’s the size of Manhattan. It takes up a big part of Manhattan. I think they say 81 percent of Manhattan.”
WATCH:
Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the president’s reelection in November 2024. The two reportedly met again at Trump’s Florida residence in January 2025. Zuckerberg also purchased a $23 million home in Washington, D.C., near the White House at the start of Trump’s second term.
Since then, Meta has pledged major U.S. investment following the president’s sweeping tariffs.
Trump applauded Zuckerberg for planning four new data centers, including the Louisiana project.
The facility will consist of nine buildings across a 2,250-acre site. It will include a significant power system featuring three natural gas plants approved by the state. Construction is expected to cost $10 billion, but Trump repeated a figure five times higher.
“I built shopping centers and for $50 million you can build a nice shopping center,” Trump said.
“When they said $50 billion for a plant… I said what the hell kind of plant is that?”
Trump told his Cabinet and reporters that the U.S. is “leading China now on AI.”
Later in the meeting, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum offered a different view.
“China beating us in the AI arms race – that’s an existential threat,” Burgum said.
“We finally have a president who talks about it,” he added.
“For the first time in history you can take electricity and you can convert it into intelligence. So it’s flipped – it’s no longer knowledge is power, power is also knowledge.”
“And while we’re ahead on the technology, we’re way behind China on the amount of electricity they’re bringing online,” he concluded.
Trump also said other countries are moving facilities to the United States to avoid tariffs. That includes auto plants relocating from Mexico, Canada, and across Europe.
“So factories are booming,” Trump said. “And when they actually open, you know – right now they’re booming in terms of construction.”
Trump is making his move against those who burn the American flag.
More than three decades after the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot prohibit burning or desecrating an American flag because doing so would violate the United States Constitution, Trump will order prosecutors to punish anyone who burns the American flag.
The president signed an order on Monday directing the Department of Justice and other agencies to “vigorously prosecute” anyone who burns or desecrates the flag, as well as “pursue litigation” aimed at having the Supreme Court overturn the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, which prohibited punishing anyone for burning an American flag.
“You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don’t get 10 years. You don’t get one month. You get one year in jail. And it goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately,” he said.
“The American flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and desecrating it is uniquely and inherently offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt and hostility toward our Nation, and an act used by groups of foreign nationals calculated to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans,” Trump added.
