Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump questioned the legality of the Harris campaign’s new advertisement strategy and accused Google of election interference in consecutive Truth Social posts on Wednesday.
The 45th president first wrote, “Wow! Google and the Harris Campaign are manipulating stories. Is that legal?”
He then followed up with, “Google trying to rig the Election!”
Trump referred to a new tactic by the Harris campaign which was revealed on Tuesday and spread like wildfire on social media.
Media bias rating company AllSides posted a thread on X detailing how the campaign was “misrepresenting news articles in Google search, making them appear like endorsements.”
An image of a Google search of “Kamala Harris history” showed a sponsored ad at the top of the search results with the title of the article linked to the ad changed from “A look at Kamala Harris’ legal career and political record” to “Kamala Harris’ Record.”
A disclaimer showing that the ad was paid for by the Harris campaign is shown above the article title.
While mainstream media news outlets often lean toward the left, this new tactic may not be welcomed with open arms.
Axios reported that a spokesperson for the news outlet The Guardian said, “While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”
Axios also wrote that various other media outlets, including CNN, USA Today and NPR, did not know that their brands were being used in that way.
Google responded that the Harris campaign did not violate any rules by using ads in this manner, and claimed that the “Sponsored” label made the ad “easily distinguishable from Search results,” according to Axios.
The outlet revealed that the Harris campaign has used almost a dozen news companies with the same type of ad.
AllSides posted a headline from The Guardian that read, “Biggest US abortion rights groups back Kamala Harris as effective messenger.” The headline was changed to “VP Harris Fights Abortion Bans – Harris Defends Repro Freedom.”
A headline from the Associated Press read, “Harris freshens up her message on the economy as Trump and Republicans go after her on inflation.” The new title read, “Building Up The Middle Class – Lower Costs and Higher Wages.”
