It’s hard to say precisely what motivated Donald Trump’s Tuesday attack on Google.
Between the Mueller probe, the self-inflicted wound from the bungled response to John McCain’s death and the trade wars, the President is mired in bad press and desperately needs to shift the narrative ahead of the midterms, especially considering what the likely ramifications would be if Democrats flip the House. Here are the current odds:
(Goldman, Predicit)
It seems likely that the legal news will get worse before it gets better and that bodes ill for November. For instance, on Monday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paul Manafort tried to strike a plea deal ahead of his upcoming second trial. That effort was nixed by Robert Mueller. Manafort was convicted on eight counts last week, just minutes before Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on the way to implicating the President in campaign violations in open court.
Meanwhile, markets are warily eyeing the next round of tariffs on China. The USTR is pondering whether to slap duties on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports, a move that would mark the most serious escalation yet in the ongoing dispute between Washington and Beijing. Seen in that light, you can view Monday’s NAFTA news as a convenient distraction although to be fair, if the bilateral deal between the U.S. and Mexico ends up forcing Canada to the table on the way to cementing a final, trilateral agreement, then it would probably be accurate to say that the President did indeed have some measure of success in terms of renegotiating trade with America’s neighbors.
The point is, the President’s legal troubles are mounting and the effects of the trade war are starting to hit home (just ask the farmers who will start signing up for bailouts next week). Given the proximity of all this to the midterms, Trump needs “wins”, distractions or ideally both.
If the NAFTA deal is a “win”, then the Google windmill at which Trump is now tilting is a convenient distraction, but it’s critical that folks think about it in the context of the ongoing efforts of America’s tech giants to crack down on the type of lies and misinformation that Alex Jones and his ilk traffic in. We talked about this at length early on Tuesday when Trump first took to Twitter to target Google.
The President can accomplish two things by kicking up dust here.
First, he can grab some headlines that will invariably land at the top of Google’s search results. That’s ironic, but it’s also deliberate. Trump declared on Tuesday morning that Googling “Trump news” turns up negative coverage, but if you Google “Trump news” on Tuesday, you end up with Trump criticizing Google. Trump is first and foremost a moron, but sometimes he is indeed “crazy like a Fox” (and there’s a news pun in there). Here’s what he said in the Oval Office about his tweets:
The second thing he can accomplish is to cast further doubt on Google as a reliable source of information. Now, he’s adding another layer to his “fake news” narrative. In addition to accusing unfavorable media outlets of being “fake”, he’s accusing Google of intentionally surfacing that same content.
Anyone gullible enough to buy into that narrative (which will be a whole lot of people), will now have reason to doubt not only the news, but also the way in which that news is curated by Google’s algos.
Here’s CNN explaining where this came from:
Trump is referencing an article by PJ Media’s Paula Bolyard published over the weekend with this headline: “96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘Trump’ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.” (Lou Dobbs, a host on Fox Business and a Trump favorite, talked about the piece on Monday night.) Here’s how Bolyard arrived at that number: She went to the Google “News” tab, typed in “Trump News” and then, using conservative journalist Sharyl Attkisson’s media bias chart, analyzed the publications that popped up.
Her conclusion:
“I expected to see some skewing of the results based on my extensive experience with Google, but I was not prepared for the blatant prioritization of left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets. Looking at the first page of search results, I discovered that CNN was the big winner, scoring two of the first ten results. Other left-leaning sites that appeared on the first page were CBS, The Atlantic, CNBC, The New Yorker, Politico, Reuters, and USA Today (the last two outlets on this list could arguably be considered more centrist than the others).
“Not a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results.”
First of all, the methodology there is dubious at best. Here’s Chris Cillizza to explain:
Attkisson’s ‘media bias” chart is not exactly an objective measure of journalistic fairness and integrity. Every major mainstream media outlet in the country — from CNN to The New York Times to The Washington Post to Bloomberg is cast as left-leaning. Infowars, Alex Jones’ conspiracy website, is placed in the center-right. Some conservatives will agree. I’m not going to convince them. But, if you believe that InfoWars has the same editorial processes to get something published as The Washington Post, I can guarantee you that you are wrong.
Yes. I can guarantee that as well.
But beyond that, Cillizza notes that this is just another example of the same type of strategy that misinformation campaigns and dubious sources always use. They posit a conspiracy and then challenge everyone to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s false. Of course given that Google isn’t going to give you the precise details of its algos (because you know, that’s a trade secret), there’s no way to know, definitively, if there’s any truth to the accusations.
On Tuesday, Google said unequivocally that Trump’s criticism is wholly without merit.
“That’s just what someone with something to hide would say”, will invariably be the rejoinder from the conspiracy theorists.
And see, that’s the problem. This is a conspiracy theory that uses the very same tactics employed by some of the Right-wing propaganda outlets who claim they are being deliberately silenced. It’s always – always – the same strategy. Something like this:
“Mutant gerbils operating at the behest of George Soros are planning to hack the midterms to tip the scales in favor of the Democrats!”
That’s ridiculous.
“Prove it isn’t true then!”
How am I supposed to prove that?
“Ha! See! The gerbils are real!”
As Cillizza goes on to write, “the best conspiracy theories are perfect machines in that regard; any attempt to debunk them will a) necessarily come up short because definitive proof cannot and will not exist and b) the very act of attempting to debunk will be seen as a surefire sign you are in on the conspiracy.”
This happens all day, everyday in the alt-Right blogosphere and the sad thing about it is that I almost guarantee some folks who frequent these pages also inadvertently frequent sites that employ these tactics, albeit more subtly than Alex Jones.
Unfortunately, this will play well with Trump’s base, who will now be even more suspicious of Google than they already were and will thus become even more detached from reality.
On the bright side, reality always wins in the long run. So you know, hang in there.
Oh dear, the old problem of how to prove a negative!! Your snark helps me hang in there. I was an English Lit major and have a couple of semesters of economics so have to look up a lot of the terminology, but I am learning a bit of econ, and that can’t hurt. Unlike ‘The Orange One’, I think learning never hurts, and you never know when something that didn’t seem to be relevant to you will suddenly slip into the puzzle and lead to an ‘Ah Ha’ moment. I even subscribed.