Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to punish Google for favoring — in his view — Vice President Kamala Harris in the results generated by its search engine.
“It has been found that Google illegally used a system to detect and display only bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some of which were fabricated for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.” The president wrote on social truth.
“This is illegal activity, and we hope the Department of Justice will prosecute them criminally for this blatant election interference.” If not, and taking into account the laws of our country, I will demand that they be tried, at the highest levels, when I win the election and become President of the United States! He added.
— Bad Legal Takes (@BadLegalTakes) September 27, 2024
The claim likely stems from an article published this week by the Media Research Center (MRC) — a right-wing nonprofit that claims to “defend and preserve America’s founding principles and Judeo-Christian values” — which was circulated by prominent conservative outlets, including Fox News. .
The article, titled “Google is up for the same tricks? Search giant pushes biased news heavily over Trump site,” claimed that Google had a “long history of interfering in US elections to favor more liberal politicians,” and that it was doing so again in the 2024 election. .
MRC asserted that Google searches for “Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential race” and “Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential race” provided evidence of the tech giant’s bias toward Harris because the Trump campaign website appeared sixth in the search results, compared to Harris’ third place.
The outlet also confirmed that the inclusion of “left-wing sources” such as Politico, New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post In the “Top Stories” box on Google searches for both candidates, this was evidence of bias, because some articles were critical of Trump.
“Google [is] Tell the reader that the most reliable sources for campaign news are CNN, NBC, The Times, The Post, Politico, and The Economist — all liberal sources,” Tim Graham, executive editor of MRC NewsBusters, declared in the article.
The so-called “research” did not provide any verifiable conclusions about Google's algorithm and internal operations. Websites are not tied to a specific site ranking in Google search results, and their position can vary significantly from day to day.
But the goal is not to conduct verifiable, replicable research in an unbiased environment, but rather to reinforce the former president's victim complex and provide fuel for his long-standing attacks against any media outlet that does not fully respect his political project.
In recent weeks, Trump has become quite comfortable threatening to imprison his political opponents, his conspiracies, or anyone he doesn't like.
In August, the former president threatened to jail Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over baseless allegations that the Facebook founder interfered in the 2020 election by donating a $350 million investment to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, a Chicago-based nonprofit that helps… Providing electoral management resources to thousands. regions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This month alone, Trump vowed to prosecute anyone accused of trying to trick him into winning the November election, said anyone who criticized Supreme Court justices (conservatives only) should be “put in jail,” and called for the former Speaker of the House to “prosecute” Nancy. Pelosi over the January 6 insurrection he incited.
Google will need to wait its turn.
