President Trump, when speaking with the Fox Business Network earlier this week, dropped hints and then came right out and said that the US government should be suing Google and Facebook. And followed that up with “perhaps we will”.
Throughout his run to The White House in 2016 and since he’s been in The White House, Trump has said that Google and Facebook are run by Democrats. Claiming that they are running “fake news” to help the opposition, which in this case, would be the Democrats.
Trump believes that Google is “trying to rig the election”. He also claimed that Twitter makes it “very hard” for users to find and follow him. Though, as usual, Trump offered zero evidence to support these allegations. Google, Twitter and Facebook have long denied these accusations. Trump also noted that “you may need legislation in order to create competition.”
This comes after the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission divvied up investigations into Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. These are the four biggest tech companies in the US, and many are worried that these companies have grown too big. It’s a bipartisan issue, and one that Senator Elizabeth Warren is running on, in her run to The White House next year.
Senator Warren is correct though. Google was originally a search and advertising company. Now look at it. It owns the largest mobile platform in the world with over 86-percent market share. It also has its hands in the healthcare space, it has its own mobile network, as well as making its own smartphones, smart home products and much more. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, has its hands in everything. And that is the same for Facebook and Amazon too. Apple, on the other hand, is pretty large, but it has mostly stayed in the computing space. Though the new Apple Card will change that.
Silicon Valley has a growing headache in Washington right now, and it’s all thanks to President Trump. The President likes to say that these companies are suppressing him and his followers, which is not actually true. But it won’t stop Trump from saying it. When talking about Twitter, Trump said that if he turned into a liberal tomorrow, his follower count would be five times as large as it is right now. Which seems a bit odd, since his following is already at the same level as President Obama’s was.
There is some bias going on with these companies, but is it to the level of what Trump is claiming? Probably not. These companies do also support Democrats pretty heavily, in fact California itself is a very heavily Democratic state. It’s a very blue state, so seeing these large companies that are headquartered in California lean towards the Democrats is not a surprise. It’s a given.
With the Presidential Election coming up next year, watch for President Trump to double-down on the bias that Google, Facebook and Twitter all have against him and the Republicans. His followers will eat that up, and that will likely be how he wins another four-year stay at The White House.