Several Big Tech companies are under fire after suppressing search results related to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Now, search giant Google faces accusations of election interference while Republicans call for a Senate investigation.
Google’s search engine users noticed that the Autocomplete function was omitting results related to the assassination attempt against Trump.
Meanwhile, social media users and high-profile figures, including Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had picked up the same examples of censorship.
When users searched for “the assassination attempt of…” in the Google search bar, Trump’s assassination attempt was nowhere to be found.
Even the New York Post tested the theory itself, using the last names of U.S. presidents who were assassinated, followed by the letters “assassin” to see what autocomplete suggested.
While the first gave helpful results, Trump’s assassination attempt was nowhere to be found when typed in.
“Even the keywords’ Trump assassination attempt’ yielded no additional terms from Google,” the outlet noted.
The Post included a list of the results from the initial search and found results about Ronald Reagan, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Gerald Ford, but none about Trump.
Fox News conducted the same experiment and saw the same results.
Even typing the phrase “assassination attempt on trum” they received results about President Harry S. Truman.
A Google spokesperson said there was no “manual action taken on these predictions,” and the company’s systems have “protections” against autocomplete predictions “associated with political violence.”
“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 spokesperson said, per the Post.
But it wasn’t just Google.
Elon Musk reposted an X post from one user who put Meta’s AI program to the test, which came up with the same results, stating it doesn’t “always have access to the most up-to-date information.”
However, when he queried about Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign, Meta miraculously was able to do so.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2024
Republican Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) also sounded the alarm, saying he “can verify” that the results are accurate in response to a post from Libs of TikTok exposing the Google results.
Can verify. @libsoftiktok @Google https://t.co/Qi5EgzPnVK pic.twitter.com/jmEL5iqZld
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) July 28, 2024
Trump Jr. shared a post accusing the tech giant of “intentional election interference.”
“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,” he 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. https://t.co/gWDbFGaHI7
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 28, 2024
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) also expressed outrage, announcing he is planning to make an “official inquiry” into Google later this week.
“Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” he asked, referencing the Truman results. “I’ll be making an official inquiry into @google this week – I look forward to their response.”
Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?
— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) July 28, 2024
I’ll be making an official inquiry into @google this week – I look forward… pic.twitter.com/GD5SOvvcdX
READ: Google Researcher Left Speechless When Joe Rogan Asks Simple Question on Privacy – WATCH
