Google has been accused of skewing search results about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in favor of his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, days after it allegedly censored searches about the assassination attempt against the former president.
A Google search for “Trump rally” brings up a photo of the vice president labeled “Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta” beneath the top stories, and the tech giant came under fire again Thursday for alleged election interference.
A Washington Post analysis on Friday showed that while Harris’ photos no longer appeared as the top search result when users typed in the keyword “Trump rally,” it still displayed a plethora of news articles from left-leaning media strongly supporting Joe Biden’s chosen successor after his withdrawal.
In the search result, titled “Kamala Responds to Donald Trump’s Remarks,” users had to scroll further down to find an article about a rally in Pennsylvania, the former president’s first return to the state since escaping an assassin’s bullet on July 13.
Top search results included a New York Times story about how the Secret Service failed to detect a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, before Thomas Crooks fired eight shots at him, and a story from the notorious anti-Trump cable network MSNBC with the headline “Trump Makes Insensitive Joke Honoring Slain Man at Butler Rally.”
The allegations of bias were first spotted by Tesla founder Elon Musk, who posted on his social media platform X, “I Googled ‘Trump rally’ and Kamala was the top result.”
Jim Osman, a British-born Wall Street trader and financial commentator, also noticed the glitch.
“We are under a propaganda onslaught from the Democratic Party. We need to pay close attention,” he said.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment Friday, referring The Washington Post to a tweet the company’s PR team posted to X on Wednesday.
“These labels are automatically generated based on relevant news topics and change over time,” the message said.
The latest controversy arose after the world’s top search engine’s “autocomplete” feature failed to show results related to the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported.
The Washington Post ran a number of Google tests using the surnames of US presidents who have been assassinated or who have suffered assassination attempts, followed by the word “assassin,” to see what autocomplete would suggest, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt.
In each case, they were presented with a helpful list of suggested search terms related to the attempt on their life.
But when Trump’s name was used, Autocomplete offered no suggestions at all.
Google’s apparent censorship was followed by criticism from rival tech giant Meta after its AI chatbot spit out results that identified assassination attempts as “fictional.”
Meta executives acknowledged the error but blamed it on “hallucinations” that are common in other AI tools.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the former president denounced the “censorship” measures as “another attempt to rig the election.”
“Let them know we all know who they are,” Trump wrote, urging his supporters to “go after” Google and Meta, whose Facebook network initially claimed an iconic photo from the assassination attempt had been doctored.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., lashed out at California’s tech giants, alleging they conspired to influence the election results.
“Big tech is once again trying to interfere in our election to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is deliberate election interference by Google. This is so vile,” he wrote to his 11.7 million followers.
One Republican, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, called for a “formal investigation.”
“Why is Google suppressing searches about the Trump assassination attempt?” he asked. “I look forward to hearing their response.”
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are both longtime Democratic donors, and a 2020 survey by the Center for Responsive Politics found that 88% of employees at parent company Alphabet identify as Democrats.
