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Google Debunks Trump's Claim It Censored His State of the Union Address (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fake-news-from-the-head-of-state dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: President Donald Trump intensified his criticism of Google today, posting a native video of unknown origin to his Twitter account this afternoon claiming the search giant stopped promoting the State of the Union (SOTU) address on its homepage after he took office. It turns out the video he posted is not only misleading, but also contains what appears to be a fake screenshot of the Google homepage on the day in question. It has since been viewed more than 1.5 million times. In a statement given to The Verge, a Google spokesperson clarifies that the company promoted neither former President Barack Obama nor Trump's inaugural SOTU addresses in 2009 and 2017, respectively. That's because they were not technically State of the Union addresses, but "addresses to a joint session" of Congress, a tradition set back in 1993 so that new presidents didn't have to immediately deliver SOTU addresses after holding office for just a few weeks. Google resumed promoting Obama's SOTU address in 2010 and continued to do so through 2016, as he held office for all six of those years.

With regards to the 2018 SOTU, Google says it did in fact promote it on its homepage. "On January 30th 2018, we highlighted the livestream of President Trump's State of the Union on the google.com homepage," reads Google's statement. "We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is not a State of the Union address. As a result, we didn't include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017."

20 of 508 comments (clear)

  1. Boggles the mind by AlanObject · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can anyone respect, admire, follow, or in any way support this overfed cesspool of ignorance and corruption defies science.

    1. Re: Boggles the mind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You realize that Trumpâ(TM)s attacks on media alone have done more damage to democracy than a generation of Hilary ever could, right? He has done more to undermine public faith in journalism than ANY Western leader in history.

    2. Re:Boggles the mind by cpurdy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I get tremendous pleasure from seeing and hearing how upset people are that Trump is president [..] I know that truth will be uncomfortable for you snowflakes, but you know what ? I don't care."

      Thank you for at least being honest that you find joy from causing others pain, or at least witnessing pain in others.

      I suppose that is as good of a reason to support Trump as any.

    3. Re: Boggles the mind by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He has done more to undermine public faith in journalism than ANY Western leader in history.

      Are you seriously implying that having faith in journalists is a good thing?

      Skepticism is good. Faith is not.

      Be sure to remind Trump supporters that ...

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    4. Re: Boggles the mind by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Skepticism is good. Faith is not.

      To which Henri Poincaré rightly said: To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. (La Science et l'Hypothèse, 1901).

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      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    5. Re: Boggles the mind by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's more subtle than that.

      In post-truth politics the assumption is that everyone lies all the time. There is no objective truth, only lies of one shade or another. You can see people stating that matter-of-factly in this very discussion.

      So all that is left is to pick whose alternative facts you prefer. It's also why Trump gets away with habitually lying about even the most trivial stuff. People aren't looking for truth any more, they are just looking for comfortable lies.

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    6. Re:Boggles the mind by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      despite the reality that their lives would be no different
      Quite true, except for if you are a member of a minority group, or had your legal immigration status changed, or separated from your family,
      The real change that Trump created isn't necessarily with policy (the president doesn't make the laws). It is his harsh enforcement of the laws, emboldening fringe racist groups to get out of the shadows and harass and harm people they don't like. Hammering the wedge between Right Leaning and Left Leaning political ideals even further.
      Ok for middle age white dude, with upper middle class wages, My daily routine hasn't changed. But knowing a lot of people who are not me, are scared and are avoiding taking the risks needed to take to further succeed in life.

      From where I work and live, I have dealt with people who have met and worked with Hilary Clinton on supporting and opposing her ideas. I always get a consistent response from them. She isn't like how she seems when in-front of the stump. She will sit down and actually listen to peoples problems, understand their view points, while she may not agree with them, she will respect that view and try not to aggravate it especially if it has some good merit. She is honestly interested in public service. Now she usually fails to show this publicly, which is probably not a good reason for her to be president, because it is a public facing job. But I can see why the Democrats and especially the "Elites" who have worked for her, pushed so hard to get her as to be President, because their view of her is based on the Private Clinton vs the public one.

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    7. Re: Boggles the mind by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sadly manipulation in US journalism is routine... and almost none of it is by government agencies.

      Can you hear that?
      That my friends is the sound of a chest beating wannabe patriot complaining about the Press again.


      You see, these wannabes somehow don't know that journalism has always been attacked by those in power.
      These wannabes haven't read history and didn't know "Yellow Journalism" or the way the press was attacked during and after the American Revolution, or in the UK in the 19th century.

      These wannabes, who most likely never had a clue what was going on in the US before the internet so kindly showed it to them in an easy to digest, less than 40 character format, and couldn't find Viet Nam or Iraq on a world map without the aid of Google, have now been shown how bad the press is, how the press is the "enemy of the people" by their Great Leader.

      Their Great Leader, who would have everyone believe he is their only and true savior, has accused the press of being unfair to him, of being bad, bad people. So unfair, so hurtful to Great Leader these press people are!

      So now the wannabes cry foul! They want to wake everyone up to their twitter/facebook epiphany that a free press is bad. BAD!

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    8. Re: Boggles the mind by mea2214 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I started reading r/the_donald to learn a little about Trump supporters. There are only two possible truths after reading that group and many of the comments in this thread; either they are all complete delusional lunatics who may represent up to 41% of the US population or I'm a complete delusional lunatic. There is no middle ground. If I were the delusional lunatic would I know? Never before have I been so frightened over politics.

  2. Can't Google sue him by future+assassin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    for defamation? This guy is straight out lying about the company and other companies and using fake screen shots?

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    1. Re:Can't Google sue him by Linsaran · · Score: 5, Funny

      I would love to see that case get tried in court. Frankly Google has a better case against whoever created that video Trump tweeted than against Trump himself; since it's easy enough for Trump to throw them under the bus and claim he was misled by what he thought was a legitimate publication. I think Google would have a hard time proving significant damages and at most might get a public 'apology' out of Trump. It ultimately would probably waste a ton of money and go nowhere. I

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  3. Trump is a cultural warrior by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just not in the way many conservatives think.

    Trump wages war daily against the bedrock values that made Western Civilization great. Generally Western Civilization has considered dishonesty, hypocrisy, infidelity, deceit, corruption, narcissism, bullyism as negative character attributes. Trump revels in these daily. Trump as someone has recently noted has embarrassed us in front of our children. The Evangelical Christians cheer him on.

    1. Re:Trump is a cultural warrior by shilly · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This insane false equivalency is, I believe, a bigger problem than Trump's base. It suggests an absolute refusal to look the truth in the eye, to apply judgement, and a passive helplessness instead of civic engagement. I blame Ralph Nader, with his stupid and memorable quote that "the only difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is the velocity with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door"
       

    2. Re:Trump is a cultural warrior by shilly · · Score: 5, Interesting

      People who bemoan western civilisation in these absolutist terms are almost always people living in western civilisations, who have absolutely zero idea of how terrible life is without it. Lately, they've been joined by Russian trolls.

  4. Re:It sure does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seriously. Sputnik news. as in:

    Sputnik (Russian pronunciation: [sputnk]; formerly The Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti) is a news agency, news website platform and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya.[2] Headquartered in Moscow, Sputnik has regional editorial offices in Washington, Cairo, Beijing, London and Edinburgh. Sputnik focuses on global politics and economics and is geared towards a non-Russian audience.[3] According to The New York Times, Sputnik engages in bias and disinformation,[4] and has widely been described as a Russian propaganda outlet.

    So I know I searched clinton during that election and did not see is awesome is winning. What total BS.

  5. Re:Let Google Prove it by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let Google Prove it

    Google doesn't have to prove anything. Let Trump prove his accusation.

    And even if Google were completely biased against Trump and every single Google employee wore PISS TAPE IS REAL t-shirts and carefully deleted every single Trumpist media outlet from their search results, so. fucking. what?

    There is nothing you can get from Google that you can't get from a host of competitors. Free speech is a bitch, ain't it? If you run for public office, especially the highest public office, you can't get upset when one of your ex-girlfriends says you got the baby dick and couldn't last more longer than a commercial break.

    The problem here is not what Google has or has not done or does or does not believe. The problem is that Donald Motherfucking Trump honestly believes that hating his gelatinous ass should somehow be illegal, and is prepared to use the full power of the United States government against a company that doesn't like him.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. Skepticism is not DENIALISM or Trump's lies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Skepticism is fine, but that implies you do research and maintain the factual record. Trump support is the antithesis of that. It's the denial and converse of the provable record, personified in every direction. It's nazism.

  7. I don't think Google cares by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    remember, they also on the receiving end of the massive corporate tax break he just enacted. He's generating a ton of web traffic which is good for their ad business. He's lax on regulation which large corporations always love.

    Bottom line, this is a bunch of very, very wealthy people having a completely meaningless scuff up while the world burns for the working class.

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  8. Re:Media by N1AK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is an issue, but it's a different issue than what Trump is saying. This ranking crap gives too much power to the media.

    Firstly just because the media are writing negative things about him it doesn't mean there is a problem; you won't find many positive stories about natural disasters, rapes, bank fraud either because it isn't the job of the media to make coverage of anything equally positive/negative.

    Secondly, even if you put aside the question of whether there is an issue with the media Trump's compliant is that it's negative press for him that is showing, and he wants media outlets with more positive coverage to be more visible. Just about any sane analysis would back the argument that the media he wants listing higher is less truthful than the media he dislikes. Thus you can't use his point as a critique of truth in the media, it's a blatant attack on any reporting that isn't positive.

    Finally, the argument you make about the media getting too much power and the impacts you list are equally if not more applicable to Trump's use of Twitter as capably demonstrated by the very story we are commenting on. Trump loves Twitter because amongst other reasons he can say whatever he wants directly with no one being able to validate or add comment before publication. The sheer volume of things that he says on there that are provably false removes any credibility he has when complaining about the accuracy of the media.

  9. Re:Clever by PseudoAnon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except Trump blatantly lies daily while journalists from major news sources tend to be accurate and only rarely need significant retractions/corrections. They have bias in what they choose to report and which details they focus on, but they rarely outright lie like Trump does. They're playing different games.