August 28, 2018

Trump Falsely Claims Google Is “Rigged” Against Him

“Illegal?” he suggested.

Michael Brochstein/ZUMA

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In a pair of early morning tweets on Tuesday, President Donald Trump complained that Google News’ algorithm is “rigged” against him and threatened to address what he claims is an unfair bias that hurts conservatives. 

The tweets appeared to suggest that the president had arrived at the conclusion by possibly Googling himself. It’s more likely, however, that he picked up the talking point and 96 percent statistic from a Monday night Fox News segment.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034371152204967936

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034373707047882759

The tweets are only the most recent examples of Trump’s long-standing theory that the media is biased against him. In 2017, he similarly claimed that Facebook along with the New York Times and Washington Post—two of his most frequent “fake news” targets—had always been “anti-Trump.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed Trump’s assertions and suggested that both liberals and conservatives “are upset about ideas and content” that undermine their political ideologies.

Even Trump’s favorite media platform has not been exempt from his attacks. Last month, the president accused Twitter of “shadow banning” Republicans.

In response, Google released a statement rejecting allegations that its algorithm is used to “set a political agenda.”

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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