President Trump has responded to multiple reports about Google’s interference in the 2020 US presidential elections and described the alleged activity from these reports as “all very illegal.” Trump’s comments come after several former Google engineers have accused the company and its representatives of engaging in illegal activity.
Trump made the comments on Twitter after a meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai in the Oval Office. Trump tagged Pichai in the Twitter thread and initially appeared to be appreciative of Pichai’s claims that Google “are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election.” However, he then contrasted Pichai’s statements with recent statements from former Google engineer Kevin Cernekee, President of the Government Accountability Institute Peter Schweizer, and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs which paint a different picture and suggest that Google is planning to interfere in the 2020 US presidential elections.
Cernekee said in a recent Fox Business segment that Google has vowed that a result like Trump’s 2016 election victory will never happen again and that:
“They want to use all the power and all the resources that they have to control the flow of information to the public and make sure that Trump loses in 2020.”
In the same segment, Dobbs described how Cernekee also went on to say that:
“Google and YouTube have been censoring political advertisements, showing biased search results, in order to already influence the election.”
In another Fox Business segment with Dobbs and Schweizer, which discussed Cernekee’s allegations against Google, Dobbs described them as “nasty stuff” and “illegal.” Schweizer then went on to suggest that academic research showing that Google suppressed negative stories about Hillary Clinton and boosted negative stories about Donald Trump is an example of Google violating election law because it represents a donation to the Clinton campaign.
These claims of Google and its representatives engaging in illegal activity, election meddling, and search manipulation have been corroborated by many former and current Google employees, leaked documents, and investigative reports.
One former and one current Google engineer have said that Pichai wasn’t telling the truth about Google’s political bias and search manipulation during his December 2018 Congressional testimony.
Subsequent research has also shown that Google search results potentially gave Democrats millions of additional votes in the 2018 US midterms. While Schweizer didn’t mention this research, it’s another example of activity that could violate election law because it represents a donation to the Democratic party.
In addition to this, numerous investigative reports have shown that both Google and Google-owned YouTube manipulate search results, often in a way that suppresses conservative content.
Some examples of these reports for Google Search include:
- Google executive Greg Coppola says Google shows CNN for 20% of searches for “Donald Trump”
- Google engineer says Google manipulates search results after mass shootings
- Undercover video shows Google executive outlining plans to prevent a “Trump situation” in 2020
- Leaked documents show that Google blacklists Breitbart News, The Gateway Pundit, and others from some of its search results
Some examples for YouTube include:
- Two former Google engineers say that YouTube manipulates its search results
- YouTube chief proposes “positive discrimination” of “authoritative sources” like CNN
- YouTube leak appears to show blocked search terms related to the 2018 Irish abortion referendum
While this search manipulation often affects conservatives, Democratic US presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is also suing Google for election interference. Her lawsuit suggests that Google’s bias goes beyond party lines and extends to individual candidates.
