Are you looking for information on Donald Trump's assassination attempt? Google won't help you with search results related to the failed July 13 shooting attempt on the former US President. It seems like the tech giant has omitted any mentions of the unsuccessful shooting bid on Trump, leading to accusations that Google is trying to manipulate the 2024 US presidential elections.
When users typed “the assassination attempt of”, it yielded no suggestions related to the July 13 event in Butler, Pennsylvania, which shocked the nation. Following this omission, Donald Trump Jr. and Republicans accused the Sundar Pichai-led tech company of “intentionally” meddling with elections.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Trump Jr. wrote, “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.”
Fox News reviewed multiple screenshots from users globally and found that Google's search suggestions included various historical events, such as the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, the killing of Archduke Ferdinand, the shooting of Bob Marley, and the thwarted plot against former President Gerald Ford, instead of the recent incident involving Donald Trump.
A few hours later, billionaire Elon Musk also shared a post on the microblogging site with a screengrab of Google search results, which did not show any suggestions for the former US President when the Tesla CEO typed “President Donald.”
“Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump! Election interference?” he captioned the post.
As the US prepares for the November 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris has announced her candidacy, with President Joe Biden supporting her to succeed him. On the other hand, Donald Trump is attempting a return to the White House.
These updates to Google's search tools come amid significant political drama, particularly after Trump claimed on social media he "took a bullet for democracy" following his criticism of FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony.
After Texas Congressman and Donald Trump Jr.and his supporters raised the issue, a spokesperson informed The Post that no manual adjustments were made to the search suggestions. Google's spokesperson explained that their systems have safeguards to prevent autocomplete suggestions related to political violence, the report said.
However, users noted that this policy didn't seem to apply when searching for assassination attempts on other politicians, such as John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt.
“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 tech giant said.
