During an appearance on Monday’s broadcast of Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Government Accountability Institute president and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer discussed the prospects of tech giant Google manipulating its search function to favor President Donald Trump’s opponent in the 2020 presidential election.
Schweizer said there were signs of it in the 2016 campaign, but Google did not expect Trump to win against his opponent Hillary Clinton. This time he said he expected Google to go “all-in.”
The appearance caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who tweeted it out late Monday.
Thank you @PeterSchweizer! pic.twitter.com/TZxmiouWOm
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2019
Transcript as follows:
DOBBS: Joining us now, New York Times bestselling author, president of the Government Accountability Institute and Breitbart senior editor-at-large, Peter Schweizer. Peter, great to see you.
PETER SCHWEIZER, PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTE: Great to see you, Lou.
DOBBS: Let’s start with Kevin Cernekee’s allegations against Google. I mean, that is nasty stuff, and by the way, it’s illegal.
SCHWEIZER: Yes, no, that’s exactly right. I mean, what people forget when they talk about, you know, corporations have First Amendment rights, it’s true. But we have these things called election laws.
You know, Exxon can’t decide we’re going to give 20 million gallons of free gas to the Trump campaign.
DOBBS: Right.
SCHWEIZER: That’s a donation to the campaign. And what Google has been doing, they did this in 2016. We talked about that in the creepy line. There’s academic research that shows they suppress negative stories about Hillary Clinton, and they boosted negative stories about Donald Trump. In 2016 I think like a lot of the establishment they thought that Trump was going to lose, so they didn’t feel like they had to tip the scale all that much. This time I don’t think they’re going to make that same mistake and I think they’re going to go all-in.
DOBBS: Well, this time if they go all-in, it seems like the Justice Department should be sitting right inside there the Google complex or campus as Silicon Valley likes to refer to their headquarters. This is — this is nasty stuff.
SCHWEIZER: Absolutely.
DOBBS: And it’s more than just to me election law, this is a fraud on the American public.
SCHWEIZER: Right.
DOBBS: What can be done?
SCHWEIZER: Well, I think you’re right. I think the key is that the Department of Justice and one would also hope in California authorities, but I wouldn’t hold my breath there.
DOBBS: (INAUDIBLE)
SCHWEIZER: Exactly, are monitoring what Google is doing in real-time.
DOBBS: Can you imagine how the idea of the California state government monitoring?
SCHWEIZER: Right.
DOBBS: Helping as much as they.
SCHWEIZER: Right, that’s their job, but they’re not going to do that.
DOBBS: Google accused of an artificial intelligence working with the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army in China and declining to work with our Pentagon.
SCHWEIZER: Yes.
DOBBS: This should not go without consequence, should it?
SCHWEIZER: No, you’re exactly right. Add to that another country, by the way, there’s this thing called Skolkovo which is Russia’s attempt to create their own Silicon Valley, what can go wrong with this, right? Well, Google has been involved in that, and there have been Google meetings with Russian officials on the same subjects.
DOBBS: It sounds like collusion.
SCHWEIZER: Yes, exactly. And but, you know, look, you have the situation where they say that they don’t like to work with the Pentagon because it creates all these uneasy feelings in among Google employees. Why does it not create the same problems when it comes to cooperation with China and Russia? It speaks to my mind of this culture at the heart of the Google company, this sort of dare I say it, authoritarian culture that they have that they are going to be the gatekeepers of information in the United States.
DOBBS: And that is the — that is the consonant if you will across all of this, China, Russia, and Google.
SCHWEIZER: Right.
DOBBS: I mean, you know, they’re now throwing a few other Silicon high- tech titans and you just about got it covered. It is also very — to be very disturbing that we are — we’re hearing that the Justice Department is not going to prosecute James Comey.
SCHWEIZER: Yes.
DOBBS: In suggesting, I’m inferring that he may get off scot-free, so will John Brennan, James Clapper and the whole rancid, corrupt mess that was the FBI and Justice Department leadership, your thoughts.
SCHWEIZER: No, I think look, you have the I.G. look into this. It’s very clear that he was leaking classified documents, internal documents. And the question is Lou, do we have these laws for a reason or their just show? If their just show or if they’re just being selectively applied, we should just get rid of them. This is sort of a prime case, the leak was done explicitly to get the appointment of an independent counsel which is what happened.
DOBBS: Right.
SCHWEIZER: So this was not leaking because you’re trying to help cover up a crime or undo malfeasance, it’s specifically designed to elicit a response, and that to me is precisely the reason you can’t allow them to leak material and manipulate people which is what was done here.
DOBBS: Well, so much — so much corruption, so much effort on the part of these deep state elites to overthrow the president of the United States. They sure as hell ought to be held accountable.
SCHWEIZER: Yes —
DOBBS: Peter, always great to see you. Thanks so much.
SCHWEIZER: Thank You, Lou.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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