Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
According to the former president, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has met with President Trump multiple times in recent days.
“Actually, I got a call from Thunder, Thunder. He’s a great guy. He’s from Google. He’s a great guy, a very smart guy. He’s the head of Google,” President Trump said at a rally over the weekend. “And he said, ‘Sir, let me tell you something: What you did with McDonald’s was one of the biggest things that ever happened at Google.’
Trump has told the story at least two other times. The first time was at a rally in Las Vegas and the other time during a conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan. In an October 15 interview in Chicago, President Trump said he called Pichai because he was frustrated by the lack of positive stories about him.
“I’ve been getting a lot of good articles lately, but I can’t find them on Google,” Trump told Pichai. “I think this is completely rigged. Just like our government is rigged, I think Google is rigged.”
Trump has gone after Google and other tech companies for years, regularly accusing them of bias and controlling the results that are released to the public. In 2019, he claimed that Pichai was “working hard to explain how much he likes me and the Trump administration.”
Pichai, like many other executives, publicly wished Trump well after he was nearly assassinated in July.
“We wish President Trump a speedy recovery. We are shocked by today’s shooting and loss of life. Political violence is unacceptable and we must all come together to strongly oppose it. No,” he wrote on social media.
