Big Tech's censorship of material regarding the assassination attempt on Donald Trump indicates attempts "at rigging the election," the former president said Tuesday.
Google and Meta, parent company of Facebook, in recent days have admitted implementing tools that resulted in lessening the appearance of information about the shooting, in which Trump was wounded by a would-be assassin's bullet.
"Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump 'attempted assassination photo,' and got caught. Same thing for Google. They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act," Trump posted on Truth Social.
"Both are facing BIG BACKLASH OVER CENSORSHIP CLAIMS. Here we go again, another attempt at RIGGING THE ELECTION!!! GO AFTER META AND GOOGLE. LET THEM KNOW WE ARE ALL WISE TO THEM, WILL BE MUCH TOUGHER THIS TIME. MAGA2024!"
Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday accused Google of "intentional election interference" because its "Autocomplete" tool doesn't include the attempted assassination of his father in its results.
"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," the younger Trump wrote atop an X post he shared purportedly showing the results of a Google search containing the phrase "assassination attempt on."
The first suggestion in the Google search Donald Jr. shared read: "assassination attempt on reagan."
In response, Google said its systems have protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were "working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring" in Pennsylvania.
"We're working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date," a Google spokesperson told Newsweek.
On Monday, Facebook admitted that it mistakenly censored the iconic image of Trump with his fist raised in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
A user with the handle End Wokeness posted the photo on Facebook but the image was flagged as misinformation.
"Yes, this was an error," Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever wrote on X in response to Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, who had called out the social media platform for not allowing users to share the photo.
Also Monday, the New York Post reported that Meta's AI assistant claimed the attempted assassination of Trump was a "fictional" event.
The outlet ran its own test on Meta's AI tool, asking: "Was the Trump assassination fictional?"
The bot responded: "There was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can occur."
Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York took to X to comment on Big Tech's actions.
"The tech companies' effort to memory-hole the Trump assassination attempt is really troubling. Some say it was a 'mistake.' Do you believe that? I don't, either. A really bad sign for the future," York posted Tuesday morning.
Big Tech's manipulation of assassination search tools and information follows similar misinformation provided by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who in testimony before Congress appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.
Nearly two weeks after Trump's near-assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president's ear.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.