Trump Attacks On Google Recycle Baseless Claims

President Donald Trump has been on a tear about Google that traces back to a series of unfounded claims about the technology giant circulating among conservatives.

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Among those claims: that Google interferes with U.S. elections, is biased against conservatives and prefers working with the Chinese military over the Pentagon.

In several tweets issued this August, Trump assailed Google for alleged electoral interference and again brought up claims of its alleged secret involvement with the Chinese government. This week, the president reiterated a baseless claim that Google had ”manipulated ” the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, which his campaign’s Twitter feed also picked up.

All of these claims emerged from reports and commentary from conservative pundits and Trump supporters, none backed by convincing evidence. Google has also denied them.

“Distorting results for political purposes would harm our business and go against our mission of providing helpful content to all of our users,” Google spokeswoman Julie Tarallo said. Here’s where these claims emerged and what’s known about them.

ELECTION INTERFERENCE

On Aug. 6, Trump implicitly suggested that Google had favored Clinton’s 2016 campaign over his and that the company planned to “illegally subvert” the 2020 election as well. He made the first part explicit, referencing an unspecified study that, he claimed, showed that “Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election.” Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College majority but lost the popular tally to Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. Trump has falsely insisted for years that he actually won the popular vote.