Trump: Google 'RIGGED' Search Results To Favor Negative Coverage

WASHINGTON, DC — In the past, President Donald Trump has not shied away from publicly bashing any and all who he sees as a foe, including the media, Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller, the late U.S. Sen. John McCain and even his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions. You can now add Google to the list.

On Monday, Trump accused Google of manipulating search results to highlight negative coverage from what he called the "Fake New Media."

"Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD," tweeted the president.

He added that CNN is prominent while Republican, conservative and "Fair Media" are shut out.

"96% of results on 'Trump News' are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous," he said, questioning publicly the legality of the alleged practice. "Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!"

On Tuesday, Trump's economic advisor Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg the White House is "looking into" whether Google is suppressing positive new articles about Trump.

Google flatly denied Trump's allegations, saying: "We never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment." The search giant said it seeks to ensure users see the most relevant answers quickly.

"Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don't bias our results toward any political ideology," the Mountain View, California-based company said. "Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users' queries."

Axios reported that representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter plan to testify before Congress on censorship and election hacking next week.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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