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Trump threatens to sue Twitter, Google, Facebook, ‘all our companies’
Donald Trump has said the US should sue technology companies after complaining that they unfairly repress his message, on the same day that Congress heard from Facebook, Google and Twitter about misinformation end extremist content spread online.The US president, who has repeatedly been shown to have used his social media platform to spread demonstrably false claims, spoke to Fox News Business on Wednesday morning, claiming that Twitter was “totally biased towards Democrats”.Mr Trump suggested the US should sue Twitter, which he accused - without referring to evidence - of deliberately limiting his number of followers.The president has one of the most closely watched Twitter accounts in the world with 61.4 million followers, more than Twitter’s own corporate account.“Twitter is just terrible, what they do. They don’t let you get the word out. I’ll tell you what, they should be sued because of what’s happening with the bias,” the president said.He added: “These people are all Democrats, it’s totally biased toward Democrats. If I announced tomorrow that I’m going to become a nice liberal Democrat, I would pick up five times more followers.”A number of conservative voices have attacked large US tech firms including Twitter and Google for alleged bias but academic studies have not backed up the claims.Analysis of Google’s search results by the Economist did not find evidence of bias but did suggest that sites rated highly by independent fact-checking websites tended to be rewarded with higher search rankings.Mr Trump also took aim at EU competition commissioner, Margarethe Vestagher, who has brought actions against a string of US technology companies for exploiting dominant market positions.“She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met,” Mr Trump said in a televised phone call to his favoured news network. “What she does to our country. She’s suing all our companies. We should be suing Google and Facebook, and all that, which perhaps we will, OK?”“They’re suing Apple. They’re suing everybody. They make it almost impossible to do business.”Shortly after the president’s comments, Google, Facebook and Twitter executives appeared before the House Committee on Homeland Security to testify about their efforts to counter terror content and misinformation on social media.Representative Mike Rogers, the committee's top Republican said he had “serious questions” about Google’s ability to be fair after undercover filming posted by the right-wing group Project Veritas.“This report, and others like it, are a stark reminder of why the founders created the First Amendment,” Mr Rogers said in his opening statement on Wednesday. “We are in trouble” if the views in the video represented Google company policy.He was referring to edited clip of a video showing Google employee, Jen Gennai, discussing the company's efforts to tackle foreign interference in the 2020 US presidential elections.As part of the discussion, Ms Gennai commented that she believed breaking up Google was a bad idea because it would result in smaller companies being charged with "preventing the next Trump situation".Project Veritas claimed that this demonstrated Google's efforts to prevent Mr Trump being re-elected, a claim Ms Gennai said in a blog post was "absolute, unadulterated nonsense".Google’s global director of information policy, Derek Slater, testified to the committee that no employee could skew search results based on their own political beliefs.“We are in the trust business,” he told Mr Rogers. “We have a long-term incentive to get that right.”
Donald Trump has reportedly complainted that his closest advisers “want to push [the US] into a war” with Iran, following his decision to cancel military strikes against the Islamic Republic.
“These people want to push us into a war, and it’s so disgusting,” the US president said about his inner circle of aides, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“We don’t need any more wars.”
Mr Trump is said to have made the remarks about his administration officials to a confidant, in a private conversation on Friday.
The 73-year-old chose to hire hawkish aides such as John Bolton, his national security adviser, who is a longtime advocate of regime change in Iran.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, also advocates hardline positions against the Middle Eastern country.
But the president abruptly cancelled planned military strikes on three Iranian targets on Thursday.
He claimed he did so after learning that 150 people would be killed in the strikes, which were planned in response to Iran shooting down an unmanned US drone.
Tehran claims the drone was struck above its own waters, while the US argues that it was attacked above international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz.
US military forces launched a cyber attack against Iran’s army computer systems on Thursday in response to the drone’s loss.
Tensions between the US and Iran have steadily been rising over oil tanker attacks in the strait, for which the US believes Iran is responsible.
Mr Trump told White House reporters on Saturday that he disagreed with his team over Iran.
“John Bolton is doing a good job, but he takes generally a tough posture,” he said.
“The only one that matters is me.”
The president also discussed Mr Bolton’s support of the Iraq war and told reporters the conflict had been a big mistake.
Mr Trump also said that unspecified new sanctions would be enforced against Iran on Monday but struck a softer tone when discussing the diplomatic crisis.
“The fact is we’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“And when they agree to that, they are going to have a wealthy country, they’re going to be so happy and I’m going to be their best friend.”