After calling Google anti-Trump, Musk shares more data; former prez's son weighs in on assassination attempt ‘coverup’ - Hindustan Times
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After calling Google anti-Trump, Musk shares more data; former prez's son weighs in on assassination attempt ‘coverup’

Jul 30, 2024 05:14 AM IST

Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and senators fumed at Google's potential “election interference” as search results completely bypassed Trump's name.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr have been on the same team regarding their mutual endorsement of former President Donald Trump for this year’s presidential race. They again apparently joined forces in citing Google’s active “election interference” on noting the tech giant’s placement of a purported “search ban” on the Republican presidential candidate.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May 30, 2020. (REUTERS)
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May 30, 2020. (REUTERS)

After his recent X/Twitter post, Musk again held the multinational corporation liable for being anti-Trump, presenting more evidence based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on September 21, 2020.

Musk shared a screenshot of a table dissecting top donor contributors to Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2020 election cycle. Noting how the present president’s highest amount of donor funds came from Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., he wrote on X/Twitter: “Probably just a coincidence that Alphabet (Google) employees were the top donors to Biden.”

The listing shows that the California-based tech company donated $1,710,272 to Biden during the 2020 election bid. In contrast, the top-most donors to Trump’s campaign were from the US Postal Service, who pitched in a cumulative amount of $240,040.

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Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and others accuse Google of meddling with 2024 elections, inciting Senate investigation

The SpaceX boss’ July 29 social media outburst came as a response to another user pointing out how Google was omitting Trump searches when one typed out the words “assassination attempt on.” Although names of other former US presidents, such as Harry S Truman, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, Gerald Ford and others, appeared to have emerged as top suggestions under the Google search, Trump’s name was nowhere to be seen in the recommendation list despite his failed assassination scare being the latest addition to the list.

Before this Musk post made it to social media, the American businessman had blatantly accused Google of “election interference” with a screenshot of Google search results omitting any suggestions related to Trump when he typed “President Donald.”

Similarly, Trump’s eldest son also fumed online, dragging Google for covering up news of his father’s assassination attempt at the July 13 campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the former president narrowly escaped a near-death experience. He wrote on X: “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.”

Also read | Donald Trump agrees to FBI interview amid investigation into his assassination attempt

Other pro-Trump politicians also took heat of the situation. Senator Ted Cruz called out Google’s “active election interference,” claiming that they were “gas-lighting the American people and trying to erase the attempted assassination of Trump.”

Republican senator Roger Marshall also joined the conversation, saying he would be “making an official inquiry into Google this week.”

Google, on the other hand, expressed utter surprise at the search engine’s “Autocomplete” omitting Trump from suggested results. A spokesperson told The New York Post that these predictions were not manually manipulated to hinder appropriate search results; instead, its systems include “protections” against predictions “associated with political violence,” which clearly became the focal point of discussion, even more so, after the harrowing July 13 incident.

Releasing a statement via the outlet, the Google spokesperson added: “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.”

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Read breaking news, latest updates from United States on topics related to elections, politics, crime, along with national affairs. Stay up to date with news developments on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump.
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