President Donald Trump told Breitbart News during an Oval Office interview on Monday that big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are “100 percent” trying to control the flow of information to the American public.
“Yeah, 100 percent,” Trump said when asked if big tech companies like Google and others are trying to control what information people see. “Do you have a doubt?”
That moment came after Breitbart News laid out for the president how Google has essentially turned off search traffic to the publication and other conservative news outlets for anything about his general election opponent former Vice President Joe Biden. A Breitbart News investigation published in late July details how Google has radically diminished search traffic to conservative outlets like Breitbart News since the 2016 election.
“The tech companies are very dishonest about that and about free speech,” Trump told Breitbart News. “It could be a big problem for them at the appropriate time.”
In 2018, Breitbart News published leaked internal video of senior Google executives discussing the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. In it, the Google executives said they intended to make Trump and the movement that helped elect him to the White House a “blip” in history.
Asked for his reaction to this, Trump again cited his many accomplishments as president — and the fact that he was giving this interview in the Oval Office — and joked: “A pretty big blip.”
Several U.S. senators, from Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to Ron Johnson (R-WI) and more, have expressed outrage and concern over evidence of Google’s search engine manipulation and these Breitbart News investigations.
In letters to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, and to Attorney General Bill Barr, as well as in interviews, these senators have expressed concern with these developments and pressed for potential antitrust action against Google over search bias because it appears to be using its monopoly power to engage in a form of election interference as well as to decide what information Americans do and do not get to see.
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in a recent interview said he was concerned that Google is trying to control the flow of information to voters, and during a recent hearing before a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) grilled Pichai on this front.
