Michael Brochstein/ZUMA
In a pair of early morning tweets on Tuesday, President Donald Trump complained that Google News’ algorithm is “rigged” against him and threatened to address what he claims is an unfair bias that hurts conservatives.
The tweets appeared to suggest that the president had arrived at the conclusion by possibly Googling himself. It’s more likely, however, that he picked up the talking point and 96 percent statistic from a Monday night Fox News segment.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034371152204967936
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034373707047882759
The tweets are only the most recent examples of Trump’s long-standing theory that the media is biased against him. In 2017, he similarly claimed that Facebook along with the New York Times and Washington Post—two of his most frequent “fake news” targets—had always been “anti-Trump.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed Trump’s assertions and suggested that both liberals and conservatives “are upset about ideas and content” that undermine their political ideologies.
Even Trump’s favorite media platform has not been exempt from his attacks. Last month, the president accused Twitter of “shadow banning” Republicans.
Facebook was always anti-Trump.The Networks were always anti-Trump hence,Fake News, @nytimes(apologized) & @WaPo were anti-Trump. Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017
In response, Google released a statement rejecting allegations that its algorithm is used to “set a political agenda.”
Breaking: Google statement in response to Trump tweet pic.twitter.com/QqMuxQ7gkj
— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) August 28, 2018
