As someone whose political fortunes were arguably impacted in negative fashion by big tech censorship in the last presidential cycle, Donald Trump has just made a bold statement about his intentions should he reclaim the White House.
Trump has signaled his intention to prosecute Google if he prevails in November, citing what he says is strong evidence that the company's search engine prioritizes only unflattering coverage of him and his campaign in order to boost his rival's electoral prospects, as the New York Post reports.
In the wake of the release of a study claiming that Google was taking active steps to bury website search results for the Trump campaign while simultaneously boosting the performance of Kamala Harris' campaign site and other coverage favorable to the VP, the former president held forth on actions he would like to take against the firm.
Taking to Truth Social to make his position clear, he said, “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.”
Trump went on, saying, “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant interference of Elections.”
He did not stop there, adding that if the DOJ resisted the notion of charging Google for the alleged offenses, he would “request their prosecution at the maximum levels” if elected to another term in the Oval Office.
Trump's concerns stemmed from a Media Research Center study that reviewed the outcomes of two distinct Google search attempts, namely, “Donald Trump presidential race 2024” and “Kamala Harris presidential race 2024.”
The search that involved Harris' name yielded results more favorable to the Democrat's campaign, placing it just below articles about her bid pulled from left-leaning media outlets.
When Trump's name was used, his campaign site came in far lower in the rendered results and appeared underneath articles from outlets critical of the former president.
According to Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, this is clear evidence of Google “trying to stack the deck in favor of Kamala Harris.”
Bozell continued, “Google's search engine pushes left-wing media articles favoring Kamala Harris and slamming Donald Trump,” and he warned media consumers not to trust the search results they receive from the company.
In response to the criticisms from Trump and Bozell, a Google spokesperson attempted to downplay the significance of the findings.
According to The Hill, a spokesperson for the tech behemoth said, “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries.”
“This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates' websites ranked in the top results on Google,” the representative added, but whether that explanation will carry any weight with Trump -- or millions of media-skeptical Americans who tend know bias when they see it -- only time will tell.
