Google criticized for apparent censorship of Trump assassination attempt in search feature
(Daily Callers News Foundation) – Google faced backlash Sunday for the apparent censorship of the assassination attempt against 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from the search…
(Daily Callers News Foundation) – Google faced backlash Sunday for the apparent censorship of the assassination attempt against 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from the search engine’s “autocomplete” feature.
Typing the phrase “assassination attempt on Tru…” into Google’s search engine does not automatically recommend the relevant phrase “assassination attempt on Trump,” instead ranking “assassination attempt on Truman” as the highest result, video posted on X by Libs Of TikTok shows.
Other results below the search conducted by Libs Of TikTok included “… Trump’s case,” “… Trump’s administration” and “How many presidents have had assassination attempts.”
“Google needs to be hauled in front of Congress to answer for this,” Libs Of TikTok wrote. “Orwellian.”
Google needs to be hauled in front of Congress to answer for this.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 28, 2024
Orwellian. pic.twitter.com/jjveFydcgo
Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall promised to make “an official inquiry” into Google when he posted screenshots of his own search results, slamming Google for “suppressing” the search for the attempt on Trump’s life.
“Why is Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” Marshall asked. “I’ll be making an official inquiry into Google this week – I look forward to their response.”
Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy shared his own screenshot of the dearth of “Trump” recommended in the search engine’s autocomplete feature.
“Can verify,” Roy wrote.
Many other users weighed in on Google’s apparent censorship of the Trump assassination attempt in its autocomplete searches, including Donald Trump Jr. The GOP nominee’s son called out Google for “trying to interfere in the election AGAIN.”
“Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable,” Trump’s son wrote with a screenshot of his search results.
A Google spokesperson told the Daily Caller that no “manual action taken on these predictions” caused the apparent suppression of the attempted assassination of Trump.
“There was no manual action taken on these predictions. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring. We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to. Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high quality information– we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson said.
Trump was grazed in the ear by a bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
