Monday on his Fox News Channel program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson sounded off on emails that revealed a senior Google employee deployed company resources to push pro-Hillary Clinton voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election.
The emails, also obtained by Breitbart News, come from Eliana Murillo, the former head Google’s multicultural marketing department, and speak of a “silent donation” intended to push Hispanic turnout in “key states.”
Carlson asked what these revelations might mean for future elections given these emails show what Google had thought they accomplished in 2016.
Transcript as follows:
For two years, the alleged threat that Russia poses to our elections has been official Washington’s obsession. The usual business of government has come to a halt as Democrats and their allies in the press fret that Russian agents may be interfering with our democracy. The root of these fears: a handful of Russian ads on Facebook that almost no one saw, and a small number of efforts to hack Democratic Party email accounts.
Now, let’s assume that all these worried people are sincere — that they really and deeply care about the integrity of our democracy. Then why have they said almost nothing about the tech monopolies that dominate our exchange of information in this country? If a few dozen Facebook ads are enough to subvert an election, shouldn’t we worry about Facebook itself, which controls literally billions of ads?
A couple of times on this show, social scientist Robert Epstein has pointed out that Google alone could determine the outcome of almost any election, just by altering its search suggestions. We’d never know what happened.
“Oh,” say tech defenders, “Don’t worry. These are businesses. They exist to make money, not to push political agendas. Turns out that’s not quite true.” An email obtained exclusively by this show reveals that a senior Google employee deployed the company’s resources in 2016 to increase voter turnout in ways she believed would help Clinton win the election.
The email we obtained came from a woman named Eliana Murillo, the former head Google’s multicultural marketing department. She sent it on November 9, 2016, one day after the presidential election. Her email was subsequently forwarded by two Google vice presidents to more staff members in the company.
In the email, Murillo touts Google’s multi-faceted efforts to boost Hispanic voter turnout in the election. She notes that Latinos voted in record-breaking numbers, especially in states like Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, the last of which she describes as a, quote, “key state for us.” She bragged that the company used its power to ensure that millions of people saw certain hashtags and social media impressions, with the goal of influencing their behavior during the election.
Elsewhere in the email, Murillo says the company, quote, “supported partners like Voto Latino to pay for rides to the polls in key states.” She describes this assistance as a “silent donation.” Murillo then says that Google helped Voto Latino create ad campaigns to promote its rides.
Now officially, Voto Latino claims to be a non-partisan entity, but that’s a sham. Voto Latino is vocally partisan. Recently, the group declared that Hispanics, all of them, are in president Trump’s, quote, “crosshairs,” and said they plan to respond by registering another million additional Hispanic voters by 2020. Voto Latino is a group with clear political goals, goals that Google supported in 2016. We asked both Google and Voto Latino for clarification on what Murillo meant by a “silent donation.” This is potentially significant legal question, but neither responded to us.
At the end of her email, Murillo makes it clear that Google was working to get Hillary Clinton elected. This wasn’t a get out the vote effort, whatever they say. It wasn’t aimed at all potential voters. It wasn’t even aimed at a balanced cross-section of subgroups. Google didn’t try to get out the vote among, say, Christian Arabs in Michigan, or Persian Jews in Los Angeles. They sometimes vote Republican. It was aimed only at one group, a group that Google cynically assumed would vote exclusively for the Democratic Party. Furthermore, this mobilization effort was targeted not at the entire country but at swing states vital to Hillary. This wasn’t an exercise in civics. This was political consulting. It was, in effect, an in-kind contribution to Hillary Clinton for President campaign.
In the end, Google was disappointed. As Murillo herself conceded, quote, “Ultimately, after all was said and done, the Latino community did come out to vote, and completely surprised us. We never anticipated that 29 Percent of Latinos would vote for Trump. No one did. If you see a Latino Googler in the office, please give them a smile. They are probably hurting right now. You can rest assured that the Latinos of these blue states need your thoughts and prayers, for them and their families. I had planned a vacation and thought I would be taking the time to celebrate. Now it will be time to reflect on how to continue to support my community through these difficult times.”
Nobody at the DNC was more upset by the results that Murillo. Google tried to get Hillary elected. They failed, this time. We reached out to Google. The company didn’t deny the email was real, or that it showed a clear political preference. Their only defense was that the activities described were either non-partisan, or weren’t taken officially by the company. They were both. Plenty of people in Google knew what was going on, and we’ve seen no evidence that anyone at the company disapproved or tried to rein it in.
Two years later, Google is more powerful than ever, and the left has become increasingly radical in what it is willing to do to regain political power. What could Google be doing this election cycle to support its preferred candidates? What could they do in 2020? It’s a question almost nobody in Washington seems interested in even asking. They ought to be interested.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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