August 28, 2018

Trump Falsely Claims Google Is “Rigged” Against Him

“Illegal?” he suggested.

Michael Brochstein/ZUMA

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In a pair of early morning tweets on Tuesday, President Donald Trump complained that Google News’ algorithm is “rigged” against him and threatened to address what he claims is an unfair bias that hurts conservatives. 

The tweets appeared to suggest that the president had arrived at the conclusion by possibly Googling himself. It’s more likely, however, that he picked up the talking point and 96 percent statistic from a Monday night Fox News segment.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034371152204967936

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034373707047882759

The tweets are only the most recent examples of Trump’s long-standing theory that the media is biased against him. In 2017, he similarly claimed that Facebook along with the New York Times and Washington Post—two of his most frequent “fake news” targets—had always been “anti-Trump.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed Trump’s assertions and suggested that both liberals and conservatives “are upset about ideas and content” that undermine their political ideologies.

Even Trump’s favorite media platform has not been exempt from his attacks. Last month, the president accused Twitter of “shadow banning” Republicans.

In response, Google released a statement rejecting allegations that its algorithm is used to “set a political agenda.”

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

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In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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