Donald Trump says that he will seek the prosecution of Google, claiming that the tech giant was only “revealing and displaying” bad stories about him but positive ones about his rival, Kamala Harris.
Trump’s post on Truth Social appeared to be in reaction to a Media Research Center study that claims Google’s search is biased in favor of Harris.
Google, though, says that the study’s conclusions are wrong and that “both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries.”
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“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,” said a Google spokesperson.
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In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “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. 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!”
Media Research Center is a media watchdog on the right, which has long claimed media bias.
Trump’s call for prosecuting Google executives is the latest in a line of retaliatory pronouncements made by the former president against tech and media outlets. Some of Trump’s highest profile supporters, including Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr., claim to be free speech advocates. Legal scholars have argued that, based on case law, the First Amendment protects how internet companies do search results, but Texas and Florida have sought to regulate the way that social media platforms moderate their content. The Supreme Court sent put those laws on hold for further analysis by the lower courts.
Google claims that the MRC report looked at an uncommon query: “[candidate name] presidential race 2024.” The nature of the results also is changing based on the news cycle.
“We absolutely do not manipulate Search results to favor any candidate,” the Google spokesperson said. “In fact outlets have reported that the Trump campaign website appears higher in Google results for these queries, compared to other search engines’ results.”
Mark Cuban, who has been a campaign surrogate for Kamala Harris, also pushed back against the notion that voices on the right are being silenced, noting that some of the biggest media giants, like Fox, draw the largest audiences, while some of the biggest influencer accounts lean right.
“The biggest influencer of all, Elon Musk, is the ultimate Trump Maxi. He probably has 5x the followers of all other political influencers combined,” Cuban wrote. “Conservative media is now the MSM. I know that makes it harder to play the victim. But that is the reality.”