Trump ramps up attack on Google, Twitter and Facebook as he accuses them of 'trying to silence' conservatives

President's latest attack comes after his claims to have seen negative news stories about himself on Google

Chris Riotta
New York
Wednesday 29 August 2018 22:13 BST
Comments
Donald Trump is claiming alleged censorship of conservatives on social media 'may not be legal,' without offering any evidence of wrongdoing
Donald Trump is claiming alleged censorship of conservatives on social media 'may not be legal,' without offering any evidence of wrongdoing (REUTERS)

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Donald Trump has hit out again at Google, Facebook and Twitter, claiming the tech giants are "trying to silence" conservatives.

The president criticised the social media sites and popular search engine for "really trying to silence a very large part of this country" from the White House on Wednesday afternoon, after tweeting accusations of censorship against the digital entities earlier this week.

"I think they treat Republicans and conservatives very unfairly," he said. "It’s not right, it’s not fair, it may not be legal."

Mr Trump alleged in a tweet on Tuesday that search results for the term "Trump News" were "RIGGED" by the "National Left-Wing Media," without offering any direct evidence to support the accusations.

"Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good,” he continued. "They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation—will be addressed!"

The White House then reportedly launched a probe into Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc, with Mr Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow telling reporters that the the administration would do "some investigation and some analysis" into the president’s claims.

"We don’t want regulation, we want fairness," the president said on Wednesday when asked whether he supports regulating social media.

Trump news: Is Google really rigging its algorithm to make the president look bad?

Both Facebook and Twitter have denied partisan censorship in separate congressional testimonies, while Google responded to the president’s accusations on Tuesday in a statement saying the search engine is “not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results towards any political ideology."

Wednesday marked the second day in a row in which the president addressed Google and other platforms from the White House, having previously claimed that the search engine was "treading on very, very troubled territory" along with Twitter and Facebook.

"They have to be careful," he said. "It’s not fair to large portions of the population."

The White House, which did not respond to requests for comment, has not provided any further details into the president’s accusations, or any investigation into the claims.

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