If you take to the internet to find information about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally earlier this month, you may be hard pressed to find it.
The GOP nominee is lashing out at Meta and Google following reports that the tech giants have been censoring searches about the shooting and marking pictures from the day as digitally altered. “Facebook has just admitted that it wrongly censored the Trump ‘attempted assassination photo,’ and got caught. Same thing for Google,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They made it virtually impossible to find pictures or anything about this heinous act. Both are facing BIG BACKLASH OVER CENSORSHIP CLAIMS.”
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of Ask Dr. Drew, to discuss the controversy and how there seems to be an effort to “memory hole” the violence against Trump.
Facebook and Meta AI
Since the 2016 election much has been made about the role big tech plays in influencing elections, and the latest allegations against Google and Meta are doing little to ease concerns. On Monday, Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – admitted that it has been incorrectly fact-checking the now-iconic photo of Trump with his fist in the air (above) following the attempt on his life.
The issue came to light after Facebook users shared that their accounts were labeling the image of the former president “altered,” along with the message “Independent fact-checkers reviewed a similar photo and said it was altered in a way that could mislead people.”
Amid the outrage, a Meta spokesperson acknowledged “people have been seeing incomplete, inconsistent, or out of date information on this topic” and “a fix” was being implemented. Meta Public Affairs Director Dani Lever later took to X to explain that the confusion stemmed from a doctored image that was making the rounds on the platform.
“This was an error,” Lever tweeted. “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.”
But it wasn’t just Facebook. People who tried to engage with the Meta AI platform about the “assassination attempt on Trump” posted screenshots of the answers they received, which said something along the lines of: “I can’t assist with that. I don’t always have access to the most up-to-date information. Can I help you with anything else?”
Google Autocomplete
Google was also forced to answer for its technology on Monday after users began pointing out that the search giant’s autocomplete feature was omitting references to the July 13 assassination attempt. Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, showed off some of her results on X and noted that “the censorship industrial complex is evil.”
Typing “assassination attempt on” into the search bar auto-populated results including “Reagan,” “Hitler,” “Bob Marley,” “Lenin,” “Gerald Ford,” and more. Trump was nowhere to be found on the dropdown list. When users tried entering “assassination attempt on trum”, Google still did not autocomplete “Trump.” Instead, it suggested results on former President Harry Truman.
A spokesperson for Google claimed there is “no manual action taken on these predictions” and the autocomplete feature is “just a tool to help people save time.” Additionally, the company said their “systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring.” Ultimately, Google is “working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date.”
Memory Holing
Megyn said the issues with both Meta and Google represent “a form of censorship” that is alarming. “It’s like they’re trying to memory hole the Trump assassination attempt because it makes him look fairly heroic,” she said.
In her view, such violence against politicians not named Donald Trump would be treated differently. “They would never censor it if, God forbid, there was an assassination attempt on, like, Kamala Harris,” Megyn explained. “That would come right up. That would be something they would want to promote, if, you know, she looked badass.”
Pinsky, who noted he has had his own experience with censorship and shadowing banning on platforms like Facebook, said he was not surprised. “There is just no doubt that certain platforms reserve the right to censor as they wish,” he said. “They have said that what they are going for is no political violence, and yet all the other instances of political violence are showing up there except that one.”
The situation, Megyn said, is a reminder of the need to speak out, and Pinsky agreed. “Fight for freedom,” he concluded. “I never though I was going to be a freedom fighter… [but] it should be everyone’s concern. No one should be telling you what to say or how to live.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Dr. Drew by tuning in to episode 852 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.