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Google’s search results for Trump assassination has some suspecting election interference

July 29, 2024 | | Print Article

With three months to go until the most pivotal presidential election in the nation’s history, it already looks like Big Tech is once again putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the Democratic Party.

Just over two weeks ago, former President Donald J. Trump narrowly missed becoming the first major party candidate to be assassinated since Bobby Kennedy in 1968, but the failed attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania is already being memory-holed by the media, and apparently, by Google as well.

It came to the attention of some that the search engine giant seems to be impeding the capability of users to search for information on the near killing of the GOP nominee, an event of great historical significance, which suggests that the company could also be in the “election interference” business.

Screenshots posted to the X platform by users show that Google’s “Autocomplete” feature wasn’t returning results for the July 13 incident, and was instead referencing older assassination attempts, including one on President Harry Truman back in 1950.

One of those drawing attention to the curious anomaly was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who accused the Silicon Valley colossus of gaslighting and meddling in the upcoming election.

This…is…insane. @Google is engaged in active election interference. They are gas-lighting the American people & trying to erase the attempted assassination of Trump,” the Texas Republican said in a Sunday post to X.

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Senator Cruz wasn’t the only one who noticed that something was very fishy at Google.

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After the strange results began to go viral on X, The New York Post tested the feature and found that something appeared to be amiss.

“The Post performed a series of test Google searches with the last names of US presidents who were killed or faced attempts on their lives followed by the letters ‘assassi’ to see what autocomplete suggested, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt,” the paper reported.

“In each instance, a helpful list of recommended search terms related to the attempts on their lives sprang into view. However, when Trump’s name was used Autocomplete offered no suggestions whatsoever,” according to the Post. “Even the keywords ‘Trump assassination attempt’ yielded no additional terms from Google.”

A spokesperson for the tech giant told the Post that “there was no ‘manual action taken on these predictions,’ and that its systems include “protections’ against Autocomplete predictions ‘associated with political violence.'”

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“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 told the paper.

By now it’s pretty clear that Trump doesn’t only have to run against presumptive Democrat nominee Kamala Harris, but the entire media and Big Tech as well. Not exactly democracy in the traditional sense.

Chris Donaldson
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