President Trump in a new interview Thursday said that Facebook, Google and Amazon may be in a “very antitrust situation,” but declined to elaborate on whether the companies should be broken up.
“I won’t comment on the breaking up, of whether it’s that or Amazon or Facebook,” Trump said in an with Bloomberg News. “As you know, many people think it is a very antitrust situation, the three of them. But I just, I won’t comment on that.”
He charged the firms with exhibiting a bias against conservatives.
He tweeted on Tuesday that Google News was biased against conservatives and said, “This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!”
He later said that Google, as well as Facebook and Twitter, were “treading on very, very troubled territory.”
Trump walked back his threats of regulation though on Wednesday.
“Not regulation. We want fairness,” Trump said.
Trump later tweeted a video on Wednesday alleging that Google promoted all of President Obama’s State of Union addresses on its homepage, but not his.
Google said that this wasn’t true, pointing out that it had promoted his address, and BuzzFeed News debunked Trump’s claim as well.
Trump’s accusations follower a larger trend among conservatives of bashing tech companies for alleged bias against conservatives. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has aggressively pushed this charge.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Sept. 5 about the issue.
On Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s search and advertising practices over antitrust concerns.