Around 5 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Donald Trump accused Google of rigging search results against him, saying that 96 percent of results for “Trump News” were from left-wing media.
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
….results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
Based on these results, Trump accused Google of “suppressing” conservative voices, reports Buzzfeed News, and “hiding information and news that is good about him.” He went on to say that Google’s supposed actions were illegal, and that he was going to address the “very serious situation.”
Later, at an event that same day, Trump claimed he was getting “thousands” of complaints.
“I think Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people. And I think that is a very serious thing and it is a very serious charge. I think what Google and what others are doing, if you look at what is going on with Twitter and if you look at what’s going on in Facebook, they better be careful because you can’t do that to people. You can’t do it. We have tremendous, we have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. And so I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful. It is not fair to large portions of the population,” Trump said, according to Buzzfeed.
The White House went on to say that they were looking into the issue, and seemed to suggest the administration was considering investigating or regulating the tech giant.
WH press secretary Sarah Sanders says in response to the president’s Tweet about Google search results: “it’s being looked into.” Says she may have more detail on that by today’s briefing.
— Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) August 28, 2018
The statistic that Trump was using comes from an outlet called PJ Media, a conservative news site. Lou Dobbs had tweeted a link to the post the day before he talked about it during his show on Fox Business.
Tech Giants Are Crushing Conservatives: 96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘@realDonaldTrump‘ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets https://t.co/V6FBgEA0fI #Trending via @pjmedia_com #MAGA #TrumpTrain #AmericaFirst #Dobbs
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) August 26, 2018
Dobbs treated it like an academic study, but Buzzfeed writes it is far from it. Paula Bolyard, the author of the PJ Media Post, said that the way she reached her conclusions were “not scientific” and that she had used “two different computers” to test the premise that Google’s algorithm was politically biased against Trump.
Tech Giants Are Crushing Conservatives: 96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘@realDonaldTrump‘ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets https://t.co/V6FBgEA0fI #Trending via @pjmedia_com #MAGA #TrumpTrain #AmericaFirst #Dobbs
— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) August 26, 2018
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