Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
David Dee Delgado | Reuters
Donald Trump called for this on Friday Google face criminal charges because of the company's bias against his election opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in online search results.
Trump wrote in a social media post that if the Justice Department does not prosecute Google “for this blatant election interference,” he would seek prosecution “as soon as I win the election and become President of the United States!”
He appeared to be responding to a new study by the right-wing Media Research Center that reportedly found that Google search engine results tended to show news articles supposedly positive for Democrat Harris, ahead of Trump's own campaign website when a Users searched for “Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential run.”
In his post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Google has been found to have illegally used a system of disclosing and displaying only bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some of which were fabricated for this purpose and at the same time only disclosed. “ good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.
U.S. Vice President and Democratic candidate for President Kamala Harris speaks at an Economic Club of Pittsburgh event at Carnegie Mellon University on September 25, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Jeff Swensen | Getty Images
MRC founder Brent Bozell told Fox News Digital earlier this week: “Google is trying to come out on top in favor of Kamala Harris.”
When contacted by CNBC about Trump's post, a Google spokesperson referred to the company's previous statement on the report.
“Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of searches for relevant and common searches,” Google said at the time. “This report examined a single rare search term in a single day a few weeks ago, and even in that search, both candidates' sites ranked in the top results on Google.”
The spokesman also said on Friday that the MRC report addressed a “very unusual question” and that the report's conclusions were incorrect.
“Inquiries about the presidential election or candidates generally turn up links to ever-changing news articles that reflect what is found on the Internet – so they are constantly changing,” the spokesperson said. “We definitely do not manipulate search results to favor a candidate.”
“In fact, media outlets have reported that the Trump campaign website appears higher in Google results for these searches than in other search engines’ results.
Harris' campaign had no immediate comment on Trump's claim.
CNBC has requested comment from Trump's campaign team.
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