Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to punish Google for — in his mind — favoring Vice President Kamala Harris in results generated by its search engine.
“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,” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
“This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections. If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum 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” —that was circulated by prominent conservative outlets, including Fox News.
The article, titled “Google Up to Same Tricks? Search Giant Pushes Wildly Biased News Above Trump Website,” claimed that Google has “a long history of interfering in American elections in favor of the most liberal politicians,” and was doing so again in the 2024 election.
MRC asserted that Google searches for “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024” provided proof of the tech giant’s bias towards Harris because Trump’s campaign website appeared sixth in search results, compared to third for Harris.
The outlet further asserted that the inclusion of “left-wing sources” like Politico, The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post in Google’s “Top Stories” box in the search for both candidates was proof of bias, because some of the articles were critical of Trump.
“Google [is] telling the reader that the most reliable sources of campaign news are CNN, NBC, The Times, The Post, Politico and The Economist — liberal sources all,” MRC NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham declared in the article.
The so-called “research” provided nothing in the way of verifiable conclusions about Google’s algorithm and internal processes. Websites are not pegged to a specific location ranking in Google’s search results, and their placement can vary significantly day-to-day.
But the point is not to conduct verifiable, replicable research in an unbiased setting, but rather to fuel the former president’s victim complex and provide fodder for his long-standing attacks against any outlet that is not outright deferential to his political project.
In recent weeks, Trump has become quite comfortable threatening to jail his political opponents, the subjects of his conspiracies, or just anyone he doesn’t like.
In August the former president threatened to imprison Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over baseless claims that the Facebook founder meddled in the 2020 election by donating $350 million investment in the Center for Tech and Civic Life — a Chicago-based nonprofit helping provide election administration resources to thousands of precincts during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This month alone, Trump vowed to prosecute anyone accused of attempting to cheat him out of a victory in November, said that anyone who criticizes Supreme Court Justices (presumably only the conservative ones) should be “put in jail,” and demanded former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “be prosecuted” over the Jan. 6 insurrection he fomented.
Google will need to wait its turn.
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