ELECTION/RUSSIA/TECHNOLOGY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump today suggested tech giants like Google and Twitter are the greatest threat to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election — and said anti-conservative bias among the companies had a greater impact in 2016 than Russian meddling…Charging Google with being ‘totally biased’ in favor of Democrats and fomenting ‘hatred for the Republicans,’ Trump downplayed Russia’s 2016 social media manipulation: ‘You know, they talk about Russia because they had some bloggers—and by the way, those bloggers, some of them were going both ways. They were for Clinton and for Trump.’ Lawmakers, academics and U.S. intelligence officials are in broad agreement that Russia mounted a vast online disinformation campaign ahead of the 2016 election with the aim of inflaming American political and social tensions, supporting Trump’s candidacy and depressing Democratic voter turnout. Trump’s comments reiterated claims that he and other prominent Republicans have made alleging that tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are biased against conservatives and deliberately stifle their accounts and content. The companies flatly deny these allegations.”
–Kyle Daly, “Trump: Tech companies, not Russia, trying to ‘rig the election’,” Politico, June 26, 2019 12:00 pm