During a business and finance engagement at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, October 15, Donald Trump launched into an unexpected tirade regarding illegal voting.
Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait asked the 78-year-old former president if he would "break up Google's parent company, Alphabet. " The president sidestepped the subject and instead brought up a complaint that the DOJ had filed, leaving John Micklethwait bewildered, OK! Magazine reported.
"I just haven’t gotten over something that the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes," according to him. "And the Justice Department sued them, that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So, I haven’t gotten— I haven’t gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that and I can’t believe it."
"But the question is about Google, President Trump," Micklethwait reminded him again.
"Yeah, look. Google’s got a lot of power, very bad to me, they are very bad to me. I can speak from that standpoint," Trump said. "They only have bad stories. In other words, if I have 20 good stories and 20 bad stories, and everyone’s entitled to that, you’ll only see the 20 bad stories. And I called the head of Google the other day, and I said, 'I’m getting a lot of good stories lately, but you don’t find them in Google.' I think it’s a whole rigged deal. I think Google is rigged just like our government is rigged all over the place."
When Micklethwait asked Trump whether he would "break them up," Trump responded, "I'd do something."
"It’s a very dangerous thing because we wanna have great companies. We don’t want China to have these companies," the former president said. "Right now, China is afraid of Google. China is a very powerful, very smart group of people, I will tell you that from very personal experience."
This follows Trump's vow to "criminally prosecute" Google a few weeks ago, which he said was unfairly favoring unfavorable search results related to him.
"It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris," he wrote on his platform, Truth Social.
"This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections," he stated. "If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!"
Meanwhile, with three weeks remaining until Election Day, former President Trump is prominently emphasizing a formidable political threat: that he would wield presidential authority to suppress dissenters.
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump characterized Democrats as an evil "enemy from within" that may incite chaos on Election Day, which he suggested the National Guard could need to address.
The next day, he concluded his address to an audience at an event designated as a town hall in Pennsylvania with a pointed statement against his political adversaries.
“They are exceedingly malevolent and, frankly, wicked,” stated Mr. Trump. “They are malevolent.” They have militarized our electoral processes. They have accomplished feats that were previously deemed impossible.
On Tuesday, he again declined to pledge a peaceful transfer of power when an interviewer at an economic summit in Chicago questioned him.
As early voting commences in critical battlegrounds, the presidential race is progressing toward Election Day remarkably and disturbingly. Trump has consistently engaged with, if not overtly supported, anti-democratic inclinations through his persistent denial of the 2020 election results, acceptance of conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud, and claims that the judicial system is being weaponized against him. He has commended leaders such as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary for their authoritarian leadership styles.
However, never has a presidential nominee — much less a former president — explicitly proposed deploying the military against American citizens just for opposing his campaign. As he intensifies his threats of political retribution, Trump presents voters with the option of a markedly different and significantly less democratic form of American governance.
“No instance in American history exists where a presidential candidate has campaigned on a pledge to seek retribution against perceived detractors,” stated Ian Bassin, a former associate White House counsel under Barack Obama and current leader of the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “It is fundamentally and egregiously beyond the acceptable norms of this country’s operations, making it difficult to express its absurdity.”
As they approach their final arguments to voters, Trump and Harris are focusing primarily on negotiating the issues that continue to be voters' foremost concerns — the economy, abortion rights, housing expenses, and American involvement in the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as per The New York Times. The competition remains close, with opinions regarding Mr. Trump firmly established among most voters.
The Harris team identifies new political prospects in Trump’s recent assaults on democratic ideals, especially among moderate Republicans and independents who disapprove of the former president’s character and divisive approach.
While Trump addressed the audience on Monday night, Ms. Harris positioned herself in a stadium at the opposite end of Pennsylvania. She took the unconventional approach of presenting an extended video montage of Trump pledging to target his adversaries. The montage encompassed his recent remarks regarding the potential for military action against the "internal adversary."
“He asserts that anyone who does not support him or refuses to acquiesce to his demands is an adversary of our nation,” she informed several thousand supporters at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania. “He asserts that he would deploy the military to pursue them.”
Harris's vehement criticisms of Trump significantly depart from her attempts to downplay him as a relic of the past. Her aides contend that Americans remain unfamiliar with Trump’s words and do not fully comprehend the implications for American democracy.
The campaign intends to include footage of Trump’s remarks, swiftly transformed into television advertisements for upcoming rallies. Harris informed aides during Monday night’s event that utilizing the video material to substantiate her argument against Trump evoked memories of presenting evidence in a trial.
