With his latest round of victories in the primaries held last Tuesday, the New York real-estate mogul, Mr. Donald Trump, is ever closer to getting his party’s nomination for the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections this November, much to the consternation of large swathes of observers, voters and political commentators across the country. While Mr. Trump has attained a very strong and loyal group of followers within sections of his own party, not everybody in the country is impressed with the GOP frontrunner. What’s interesting is that it’s not just the Democrats who’re up in arms over the possible nomination of the flamboyant New York billionaire. The high levels of opposition Mr. Trump faces from within his own party establishment is simply unprecedented in mainstream American politics at the highest level in recent times.
With more and more people joining the anti-Trump bandwagon by the day, it is now the turn of a couple of left-leaning groups to petition Google to drop out of its plans to participate at the Republican National Convention at Cleveland, Ohio, this July. Color of Change and Credo Action claim to have already collected 500,000 signatures for their aforementioned petition which they now plan to hand over to Google’s executives at the company’s Mountain View headquarters later today. The organizations also have a plane flying over the Googleplex displaying a banner that reads “Google: Don’t Be Evil. #DumpTrump”. According to Ms. Heidi Heiss of Credo, “Our ask to Google is really simple: Don’t put your brand on a Trump-led convention. They’re legitimizing and normalizing Trump’s platform, which is racist, misogynistic and xenophobic. We don’t want that platform to be validated by a company like Google”.
It remains to be seen what comes of this initiative, but on its part, Google says that it is planning to attend the convention very much the same way it plans to attend the Democratic Convention a few days later at Philly – as a neutral and nonpartisan observer, not unlike the way media outlets are expected to operate. Google is also expected to provide real-time data insights and information during the convention. Meanwhile, Google is not the only company being asked to reconsider its decision to sponsor the RNC. Color of Money has also reportedly sent letters to AT&T, Cisco, Coca-Cola and Xerox, asking them not to associate themselves with Mr. Trump. So far, however, there’s no word on whether any of the companies are considering acting on these requests and petitions.