Google is interfering in the 2024 presidential election, says Elon Musk, and he has the screen cap to prove it. The Tesla CEO and owner of X recently Googled “Donald Trump” and was met with results that were about as far away as one could get from images of Cheetos and god-awful dance moves.
Yes, when Musk typed “President Donald” into his search bar, the first results he saw were “President Donald Duck” and “President Donald Reagan,” which he seemed to take as irrefutable proof that Google is trying to tip the 2024 election away from Trump and toward a fictional Disney character and a former president who has been dead since 2004.
While some of us (hi) will need to see better evidence of authentic election interference on Google’s part ⏤ especially after being unable to recreate the same results in two different web browsers ⏤ naturally Musk’s followers leapt to his defense. Some said Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, is in the pocket of the “big DNC” conspiracy and that Google is “owned by Democrats.” Others went on to allege that Google suppressed search results on Trump’s attempted assassination. As Musk quickly promised, “I’m going to buy Google and shut that woke search engine off!”
Hey Elon, what about Russian bots on X?
While Musk concerns himself with alleged Google election interference, reports continue to swirl that Russian bot farms are still actively spreading political misinformation on the platform Musk owns, X. Nearly 1,000 Russian bots have impersonated Americans on the platform, according to a July 2024 Forbes report, and according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, ” … [T]he Justice Department has disrupted a Russian-government-backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation in the United States and abroad.”
Around the same time Musk posted the Donald Regan “smoking gun,” photojournalist Pete Souza’s X account was suspended after Souza shared a photo of Trump’s ear, suggesting it didn’t look as injured as it should a few weeks after the convicted felon survived an attempted assassination. As one comment put it, “No. Election interference is when the Owner of a social media platform (YOU), repost a deepfake AI voiced hit piece against a major party presumptive nominee for president. By the way, the search worked just fine for me. I have an I.T guy that can come and look at your device [sic].” The user was referring to a video Musk had shared using Kamala Harris’s voice without disclosing that it had been altered, which seems to be perfectly acceptable on X despite former presidents and ducks being unacceptable Google fare.
Only time will tell if Musk does, in fact, buy Google like he says he will ⏤ or, you know, actually build that Iron Man suit. In the meantime, we can count on him to keep running his mouth on X and enjoying his ride on the J.K. Rowling bandwagon.