Tipsheet

Hmm: Here's What Happens When You Try to Google the Trump Assassination Attempt

There’s something amiss with Google’s search of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13: it doesn’t show up in the autocomplete prompt. If you search, “the assassination attempt of,” Donald Trump’s near-fatal rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, is nowhere to be found. It was one of the year's biggest news stories, dominating the news for days until Joe Biden dropped out on July 21. Is the big tech giant trying to bury the results and interfere in the election? Donald Trump Jr. took to social media to proclaim as much (via NY Post): 

A key Google feature is failing to show results for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — drawing claims from the former president’s son that Big Tech companies are trying to influence the election. 

It has also sparked a Senate investigation. 

Google users were surprised to discover that the search engine’s “Autocomplete” was apparently omitting suggested results related to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. 

[…] 

The Post performed a series of test Google searches with the last names of US presidents who were killed or faced attempts on their lives followed by the letters “assassi” to see what autocomplete suggested, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt. 

[…] 

A Google spokesperson told The Post that there was no “manual action taken on these predictions,” and that its systems include “protections” against Autocomplete predictions “associated with political violence.” 

[…] 

Trump Jr. also shared an X post featuring a screenshot of Autocomplete results, which he called “intentional election interference” by the search giant. 

“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 to his 11.7 million followers. 

Google’s CEO said that its AI programs would be used to combat Trumpism. When you have someone helming a search engine giant say these things, and then this stuff happens, it's not insane to hurl the election interference attack. It's what they're doing.

Haul Google's front office before Congress to answer some questions.