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Trump, without evidence, says social media companies have interfered in elections

The president's comments come as Facebook and Twitter face Congress.

Marrian Zhou Staff Reporter
Marrian Zhou is a Beijing-born Californian living in New York City. She joined CNET as a staff reporter upon graduation from Columbia Journalism School. When Marrian is not reporting, she is probably binge watching, playing saxophone or eating hot pot.
Marrian Zhou
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President Donald Trump has accused Silicon Valley companies of liberal bias and suppression of conservative voices.

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President Donald Trump lashed out at social media companies again, accusing tech companies of interfering in the 2016 and 2018 elections without providing evidence for his allegations. 

In an interview with The Daily Caller published on Wednesday, Trump said the companies had a liberal bias that played out during the 2016 election campaign that won him the White House. He cited Facebook and Google by name.

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"I mean the true interference in the last election (2016) was that — if you look at all, virtually all of those companies are super liberal companies in favor of Hillary Clinton," Trump told The Caller. "Maybe I did a better job because I'm good with the  Twitter  and I'm good at social media, but the truth is they were all on Hillary Clinton's side, and if you look at what was going on with Facebook and with Google and all of it, they were very much on her side." 

Trump told the conservative publication that social media companies had already interfered in the 2018 elections. He offered no evidence to support the allegation in the published interview.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump's comments come as senior executives from Twitter and Facebook answer questions from Congress about foreign influence conducted over their services during election campaigns. In written testimonies released ahead of the Senate hearing, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg defended their platforms and pledged to fight foreign interference in US elections. 

In a recent tweetstorm, Trump accused social media companies of "totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices"on their platforms. The tweets followed the high-profile banning of far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones from major tech giants like Twitter, Google's YouTube, Facebook, Apple 's iTunes and more.

Twitter declined to comment. 

Facebook and Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. 

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