by Greg Piper
Google’s search engine conspicuously left out Donald Trump in autocomplete suggestions for “assassination,” “assassination attempt” and even “president donald” Sunday, drawing criticism from social media users including X owner Elon Musk that it was censoring recent history.
The curious suggestions recalled FBI Director Chris Wray questioning whether a bullet even hit the blood-streaked Republican presidential nominee in the attempted assassination, which the bureau walked back after backlash from conservative lawmakers.
Google quickly responded to a Just the News query on the assassination-specific search suggestions, which were highlighted in multiple posts by Libs of TikTok Sunday and verified by House and Senate lawmakers, at least one state attorney general and Just the News.
Musk noted that the suggested finish for “President Donald” was “Duck,” the Disney character, and “Regan,” President Reagan’s chief of staff Donald Reagan, as of late Sunday. (“Trump” had replaced “Duck” in Google suggestions Monday morning when Just the News checked.)
Even an explicit search for “assassination attempt trump” and “president donald trump” returned no suggestions over a 13-hour period from Sunday to Monday morning.
“These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Miss., posted on X, referring to Google’s suggestion to search for the assassination attempt on former President Harry Truman but not former President Trump. “I’ll be making an official inquiry” to Google this week.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, agreed that Congress should investigate Google’s search suggestions.
Why is @Google suppressing the search about the Trump assassination attempt? These are all screenshots from this morning. Has there been a dramatic increase in Truman biographers in the last two weeks?
I’ll be making an official inquiry into @google this week – I look forward… pic.twitter.com/GD5SOvvcdX
— Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) July 28, 2024
“There was no manual action taken on these predictions,” according to a Google statement credited to an unnamed spokesperson given to Just the News by Lara Levin, head of search communications.
“Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” the statement read.
“We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date,” according to the statement, which emphasized “Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to.” It said Google connected searchers to “helpful results” in the immediate aftermath of “this terrible act.”
Levin provided a second statement late Monday morning that refers to Google’s four-year-old explanation of how Autocomplete works and emphasizes that search “predictions can change when searches trend in large volumes, which is why people may be seeing fluctuation in predictions.”
“Autocomplete is currently not working as intended for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president,” the statement read.
“We’re looking into these anomalies and working on improvements, which we hope to roll out soon. Our autocomplete systems are dynamic, so predictions will change based on common and trending queries. Regardless of Autocomplete, people can always search for whatever they want, and we’ll continue to connect them with helpful results,” the statement read.
Searching for “vice president” by itself suggests Kamala Harris, the current officeholder, but starting her first or last name after the title confuses Google.
Levin said the “Donald Regan” suggestion for President Reagan’s chief of staff was “the result of spell checking. Donald Regan wasn’t president, so our systems interpret that query to be about Ronald Regan.”
Meta AI, which shares a parent with Facebook, also omitted any details on the Trump assassination attempt when asked, instead responding that he had faced “incidents that could be perceived” as attempted assassinations.
Asked what happened to Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania — the site of the attempted assassination — Meta AI referred to an incident two years ago where a man “attempted to rush” Trump’s motorcade en route to a rally.
Meta did not immediately answer a query Monday morning about its AI response.
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Just the News reporter Greg Piper has covered law and policy for nearly two decades, with a focus on tech companies, civil liberties and higher education.
Image “Google Search Suggestion Failure” by Roger Marshall.
