Former US President and Republican presidential candidate for 2024, Donald Trump, stated on Friday (September 27) that if he wins the election in November, he will demand the prosecution of Google for allegedly biasing online search results towards his political opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, thereby “interfering with the election”.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, created by him, Trump wrote, “It has been confirmed that Google illegally used a system that only displays and promotes bad news about Donald J. Trump, some of which are fabricated for this purpose, while at the same time, only showing positive news about Comrade Kamala Harris.”
“This is an illegal activity, and I hope the Department of Justice will bring criminal charges against them for this blatant election interference,” he continued. “If they do not, under the premise of obeying our country’s laws, when I win the election and become the President of the United States, I will demand the highest level of prosecution against them!”
This post by Trump seems to be a response to an article published this week by the conservative organization Media Research Center (MRC), which states that a new study has found that the search giant Google promotes news with severe bias. When users search for “Donald Trump 2024 Presidential Campaign,” Google’s search engine often displays news reports favorable to Kamala Harris, even placing them ahead of Trump’s own campaign website.
The article claims that Google has “long been interfering in US elections, supporting the most liberal politicians,” and is doing so again in the 2024 election.
The article also mentions that when searching for Trump’s campaign website on Google, it ranks sixth, while searching for Kamala Harris’s campaign website shows it ranking third.
The Hill reached out for comment on this matter, and a Google spokesperson responded, “Both campaign websites have consistently appeared at the top of relevant and common search queries. This report analyzed a rare search term on a particular day weeks ago, and even then, both candidates’ websites appeared at the top of Google search results.”