Republican leaders demand answers from Google after assassination attempt search term fiasco

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Republican leaders have called for a Congressional investigation and hearing into the practices of Google after search terms relating to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump started to not pop up.

On Wednesday, July 31, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) announced that he had sent a letter to Google CEO Sunda Pichai to demand answers for the suppression of search terms related to the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13.

In the letter, Sen. Marshall requested a full investigation and Congressional hearing into the “censorship of conservatives and blatant bias.”

Additionally, Marshall’s letter outlines a repeated history of discrimination toward conservative viewpoints. The letter comes after Republican leaders took to X to sound the alarm on Google’s refusal to recommend any topics related to the assassination attempt. An investigation was also announced earlier this week.

“Google advertises itself as a search engine and aggregator, not a censor. If Google wishes to become to a publishing firm or editor, Congress could then regulate accordingly by removing the sacred Section 230 protections your firm has long used to silence conservative voices,” Marshall wrote.

However, Google has claimed that “no manual action” was taken to modify the search results. Employees have also previously raised concerns that the internal unspoken company standard is to play “whatever political side of the fence,” the nation is on.

A quick Google search confirms that search terms do pop up for the assassination attempt until “former” or “president” is added to the search bar.