Users searching Google for the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump come up empty, leaving the search engine giant open to accusations of election manipulation.
Conservatives have accused Google of interfering in elections dating back to 2008, and its suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop story in 2020 drew ire from many on the right.
Now, search engines are noticing that when they type the terms “assassination attempt” into the system, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that occurred just two weeks ago does not appear.
The news reached Donald Trump Jr., who issued a harsh statement on X regarding the omission.
He wrote: “Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference by Google. It is truly despicable.”
Users searching Google for the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump get no results, leaving the search engine giant open to accusations of election manipulation
Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy posted his own attempt under the headline: “You can verify.”
“Why are you censoring DJT’s assassination attempt?” asked popular account LibsofTikTok.
The screenshot below their posts shows a user searching for the words “attempted murder” and then listing several names of people who were shot decades ago as part of its auto-complete feature.
Some of the non-Trump names included Ronald Reagan, Bob Marley, Vladimir Lenin, Gerald Ford and William Seward.
A search on DailyMail.com for the phrase “the assassination attempt on” on Sunday night returned results for Reagan and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but not Trump.
Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, and miraculously survived.
“We are working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date,” a Google spokesperson told the New York Post in a statement.
“Of course, autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time and allow them to continue searching for what they want. After this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high-quality information; we provide them with useful results and will continue to do so,” they added.
The news reached Donald Trump Jr., who issued a harsh statement to X regarding the omission.
They said no “manual action” had been used to create these autocompletes and that there are “protections” in place against suggestions that are aligned with political violence.
In March, a Media Research Center study not only cited 16 incidents of Google election interference, but also claimed that Google’s new artificial intelligence tool, Gemini, “will not answer negative questions” about Joe Biden.
“MRC researchers have uncovered 41 instances of Google interfering in elections over the past 16 years,” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider and editor Gabriela Pariseau wrote in the report’s summary.
“From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip something that should never have been made public: that Google uses its ‘great strength, resources and reach’ to promote its leftist values,” the authors added.
Google has strongly denied the report’s claims, calling them “unfounded and inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties,” including “many that failed in court.”
The report cited research by AllSides researcher Dr. Robert Epstein, who found that “Google results and get-out-the-vote reminders favored Democrats and changed the 2020 election results by at least 6 million votes.”
Dr Epstein added that the US corporation’s search algorithm “likely shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton” in 2016.
“Google’s enormous influence on information technology, politics and American elections became evident in 2008,” the authors summarized.
Conservatives have accused Google of interfering in elections since 2008, and its suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop story in 2020 drew ire from many on the right. Pictured: Google CEO Sundar Pichai
‘After failing to prevent then-presidential candidate Donald Trump from being inaugurated as president following the 2016 election, Google has made it clear to any keen observer that it has been – and will continue to be – interfering in US elections.’
“Its impact has increased dramatically, making it increasingly damaging to democracy,” they added.
‘In every case, Google harmed candidates, regardless of party, who threatened their left-wing candidate of choice.’
MRC Free Speech America, a division of the conservative Media Research Center, also criticized Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence service for allegedly “refusing to answer questions damaging” to Biden.
He added that the engine also appeared to favor left-leaning Democratic candidates, such as Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008 and Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012.
The site is also accused of using its algorithm to exclude autocomplete results that were potentially damaging to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and of “failing to do the same for then-candidates Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.”
Google condemned the report as inaccurate.
“There is absolutely nothing new here: just a recycled list of unfounded and inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties and many of which failed in court,” the search engine said.
‘Left-wing politicians also have a long history of making similar claims.
‘We have a clear commercial incentive to keep everyone using our products, so we don’t want them to be biased or inaccurate and we have safeguards in place to ensure that.
‘Many conservatives have had particular success using our platforms to spread their message to a broad audience.’
Google said third parties including The Economist, Stanford and Ahrefs conducted similar studies and “found no evidence to support claims of political bias.”
“Our algorithms look at the features and qualities of sites, not individual pages and never political ideology,” a Google spokesperson said.
