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Results for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — drawing claims from the former president’s son that Big Tech companies are trying to influence the election.
Google users were surprised to discover that the search engine’s Autocomplete was apparently omitting suggested results related to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. The anomaly quickly caught the attention of social media users, including a Texas congressman and Donald Trump Jr., who began sharing screenshots of their own examples showing Google search suggestions coming up empty for queries about the deadly Pennsylvania rally shooting. There’s no mention of Trump even when the entire search term “the assassination attempt of” is typed into the Google homepage search bar.
The Post performed a series of test Google searches with the last names of US presidents who were killed or faced attempts on their lives followed by the letters “assassi” to see what Autocomplete suggested, including John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt. In each instance, a helpful list of recommended search terms related to the attempts on their lives sprang into view.
However, when Trump’s name was used Autocomplete offered no suggestions whatsoever. Even the keywords “Trump assassination attempt” yielded no additional terms from Google. Google’s search results still point to news articles about the July 13 shooting.
A Google spokesperson told The Post that there was no “manual action taken on these predictions,” and that its systems include “protections” against Autocomplete predictions “associated with political violence.” “We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to. Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find high quality information– we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson said.
Once word of the oddity spread, it caught the attention of thousands of users who were able to recreate the phenomenon on their own, including Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, who wrote “Can verify” alongside a screenshot of his own attempted search. Trump Jr. also shared an X post featuring a screenshot of Autocomplete results, which he called “intentional election interference” by the search giant. “Big Tech is trying to interfere in the election AGAIN to help Kamala Harris. We all know this is intentional election interference from Google. Truly despicable,” he wrote to his 11.7 million followers.
The Post also performed searches for “Biden assassination attempt,” both partial and in full, which it should be noted also yielded no Autocorrect suggestions. Although it’s not widely considered an assassination attempt, Sai Varshith Kandula, an alleged neo-Nazi, rammed a rented U-Haul truck into White House security barriers in May, 2023, said his goal was to “Kill the president If that’s what I have to do.”
