- On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump went after Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a series of tweets.
- Trump said Pichai “was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China’s military.”
- Trump’s outburst was seemingly spurred by a segment on Fox Business’ “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that featured a former Google engineer named Kevin Cernekee accusing Google of bias against Trump.
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President Donald Trump went after Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday morning in a series of tweets.
Trump said Pichai had visited the Oval Office and was “working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China’s military, that they didn’t help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary.”
He added, “We are watching Google very closely!”
Pichai and other tech leaders have repeatedly visited the White House since Trump was elected in 2016.
It wasn't immediately clear which meeting with Pichai that Trump was referring to, and White House press representatives didn't immediately clarify. Pichai's most recent meeting with Trump was in March, when the two men discussed relations with China and "political fairness," Trump said.
Trump's outburst at Pichai was seemingly in response to a segment on Fox Business' "Lou Dobbs Tonight" that featured a former Google engineer named Kevin Cernekee.
In an interview with "Fox & Friends" that was replayed in the segment, Cernekee, who was fired from Google in 2018, accused Google of bias against Trump and intentionally altering the way its service works.
Trump had embedded a video of the segment in a tweet that read: "Check out what @Google is up to for the 2020 election!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706052768157701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706058724040704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the interview, Cernekee said Google intended to "use all the power and all the resources that they have to control the flow of information to the public and make sure that Trump loses in 2020."
This is far from the first time Google has become a political target.
Trump has made similar accusations of bias in the past, and last week Peter Thiel, the Facebook board member and prominent Silicon Valley conservative, published a scathing op-ed article in The New York Times blasting Google's relationship with China.
Google has repeatedly denied allegations of anti-conservative bias, and representatives have testified in front of Congress that the allegations are unfounded.
"The statements made by this disgruntled former employee are absolutely false," a Google representative said on Tuesday morning. "We go to great lengths to build our products and enforce our policies in ways that don't take political leanings into account. Distorting results for political purposes would harm our business and go against our mission of providing helpful content to all of our users."