United States President Donald Trump made another 180 on Google several days back, having done so via Twitter as he went on to defend the company against accusations that it’s more willing to work with Chinese military than the American one – allegations he himself parroted and fueled last week.
“Google is helping China and their military, but not the U.S. Terrible!,” Trump wrote in mid-March, directly relating Google’s supposed cooperation with Beijing’s communist government to vague claims about Alphabet’s subsidiary previous cooperation with Hillary Clinton’s camp, mocking the company over those unspecified acts.
“Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo [sic] on the side of the Radical Left Democrats,” the head of the U.S. said just three days after the initial outburst, hardly the first occasion whereon he publicly criticized the Mountain View, California-based Internet juggernaut for any number of things.
Barely a week later, the President tweeted about his meeting with Sundar Pichai, Google’s Chief Executive Officer, asserting the industry veteran “stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military” and concluding that the gathering “ended very well” following a discussion on political fairness and various “things” Google is able to do for the U.S. The President wrongly referred to Mr. Pichai as the President of Google as part of the same communication, which is actually a position divided into four roles, all responding to Mr. Pichai. On the other hand, Google parent Alphabet still has co-founder Sergey Brin as its President.
No end to flip-flopping
The President’s newest remarks signify just the latest occasion on which he flipped on the subject of Google, with all of his recent public statements pertaining to the company oscillating between extremely positive and unapologetically negative.
For example, it was only ten days back, immediately following his original Google-China remarks, that the President actually used Google as an example of how unfair the European Union is toward regulating American innovation relative to how it approaches domestic one, having made those comments in front of the Marine One Departure, adding to the dramatic factor of the story at hand.
Last year, the President referred to Google as one of America’s “great, great companies,” having done so shortly after blasting it yet again in regards to what he deemed systematic bias against conservative voices online, a criticism he repeated many times over.
In essence, it appears Trump sees the value Google has for the U.S. in spite of his personal beef with the company but he is — consciously or not — refusing to address both at the same time. The result of that state of affairs is a rather mixed bag of polarizing proclamations about Google which range from remarks pertaining to real-world developments to opinions that have yet to be based in hard facts. The latter primarily refers to claims Google systematically oppresses conservative opinions on the Internet; even though it’s undeniable the company’s workforce from is pronouncedly left-leaning from the bottom up, there is still little in the way of evidence of any actual thought suppression taking place on the part of Mountain View.
Trump’s newest update on Google comes amid the media frenzy and political chaos that ensued following the summary of the Mueller probe into 2016 election interference released by U.S. Attorney General William Barr which concluded there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in regards to any affair associated with the latest presidential race in the country.