Trump slams Facebook, Google for 'censorship' after assassination attempt search results omitted, images deleted

Donald Trump took aim at both Google and Facebook on Tuesday, after both tech giants suppressed or censored information regarding the assassination attempt against his life. A search feature on Google reportedly removed results for the attempt on his life. Facebook forced users to delete an iconic photo of Trump just after the attempt, with fist raised, and face bloodied.

"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. 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," Trump said on Truth Social.

That attempt, on July 13 in Butler, PA, killed Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family from bullets, and injured two other men. After Trump was hit with a bullet, and Secret Service tried to usher him off stage, he stood, raised his fist, and told the crowd "fight, fight, fight!" An AP reporter snapped the photo, Trump defiant, red streaks on his face, surrounded by Secret Service, the blue sky behind him. When users shared that photo, they received fact-check messages saying the photo had been altered and had to be removed.

Facebook was responding to a doctored photo that showed Secret Service agents smiling after the assassination attempt, but in their fervor to remove that photo, they tried to remove not just the altered image but all the images of Trump with his fist raised. Facebook parent company Meta later admitted there was a mistake.

"This was an error. This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake," communications director for Facebook Dani Lever said.

Google, however, was accused of election interference for their efforts to shut down information regarding the attempt on Trump's life. This came after users on X shared screenshots of Google's autocomplete function, which eliminated Donald Trump from the "assassination attempt on" searches.

"We're working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date," said Google in a statement. "Of course, autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to. Following this terrible act, people turned to Google to find quality information - we connected them with helpful results, and will continue to do so."

During the 2020 election cycle, Facebook, Twitter and Google were all found to have been censoring and suppressing content that was negative for Joe Biden. This was revealed at Twitter after Elon Musk bought the company and took the files public, at Facebook by Rep. Jim Jordan and others.