Trump warns of violence if GOP loses midterms
> President also accuses Google of rigging search results against him
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump ( pix) warned evangelical leaders that if Republicans lose control of Congress in the midterm elections, Democrats will institute change “quickly and violently”, The New York Times has reported.
At a meeting with those leaders at the White House on Monday, the US president said everything is at stake for his conservative agenda if his GOP loses in November, according to an audiotape of the meeting obtained by the Times.
Democrats “will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently”, Trump said, according to the report published on Tuesday night. “They will end everything immediately. “When you look at Antifa,” he added, referring to militant leftist anti-fascism groups, “and you look at some of these groups, these are violent people”.
The Times said a White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, declined to expand on what the president meant.
This is not the first time Trump has warned of violence if things did not go his way.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, he said his supporters would probably react violently with riots if he did not win the Republican nomination.
The president also stepped up attacks on big tech firms on Tuesday, warning Facebook, Google and Twitter to be “careful”, hours after slamming what he called “rigged” internet search results.
Trump offered no details on any action he might take, but a top White House aide suggested the administration may look at some type of regulation in response to the president’s complaints.
After a pair of early-morning tweets assailing Google, Trump expanded his warnings to other big internet firms in comments to reporters at the White House.
“I think Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people and I think that is a very serious thing and it is a very serious charge,” he said.
He went on to cite Facebook and Twitter, in an apparent reference to his claims last week of social media suppressing conservative voices. “You can’t do that to people,” he said. “We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in.
“Google and Twitter and Facebook – they are really treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful.”
In his Twitter comments, the president complained that Google searches for “Trump news” brought up mostly negative stories about him.
“They have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/ Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?” he wrote.
According to Trump, “96% of results on ‘Trump News’ are from National LeftWing Media”.
Google strongly rejected any bias claims.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology.” – AFP