Trump’s enormous ego is the biggest threat to Google, new interviews show

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sat for an interview with Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and the Economic Club of Chicago this week and consistently pretended to ask straightforward economic questions, frequently replacing his own personal experience with a worldview. (“I can speak from that point of view,” he said, describing shifts in the way topics affect him.)

In the case involving the possible breakup of Alphabet – better known as Google – Trump has shown that his thinking about Google was largely personal and about the way the search engine prioritized stories about him. The former president seemed willing to trade fewer legal problems for the Silicon Valley giant for more positive treatment from him.

A Stronghold Newsletter claims the interview “demonstrates the great man’s solipsism, his crazy hubris, his total inability to concern himself with policy issues.”

Trump: Look, Google has a lot of power. They are very bad for me. Very bad for me. I mean, I can speak from that point of view. They only have bad stories. In other words: if I have twenty good stories and twenty bad stories and everyone is entitled to them, then you will only see the twenty bad stories. And I recently called the head of Google and I said I’ve been getting a lot of good stories lately. But you won’t find them in Google. I think it’s a whole rigged deal. I think Google is being manipulated, just like our government is being manipulated everywhere.

Micklethwait: In other words, you would take them apart?

Trump: I would do something. You have to, look, I give a lot of credit. They have become such a power. It’s such a force. And you have to give them credit for that. How they became a power is really up for debate. At the same time, it’s very dangerous because we want to have great companies. We don’t want China to get these companies. You know China is a very powerful, very smart group of people.

Later returning to Google when asked about banning Chinese-owned TikTok because it is believed to pose a threat, Trump said:

“Sometimes you have to overcome these threats. You know, that’s not possible, just like Google. I’m not a fan of Google, they treat me badly. But are you going to destroy the company by doing so? If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What you can do without breaking it is make it more fair. They treat me very badly.”

(NOTE: Trump’s other recent experiences while speaking at Economic Clubs also revealed his tendency to focus on his personal views and avoid details, a habit his supporters forgive — or even praise. At the Economic Club of New York in September, Trump was pilloried in the press for answering a question about childcare with a lengthy treatise on tariffs – text below.)

Trump’s response at the Economic Club of New York on whether he would “prioritize child care” yielded this answer:

“Well, I would, and we’ll sit down. You know, I was someone – we had, Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka had so much influence on that issue. It is a very important issue.

“But I think when you’re talking about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about – that because childcare is childcare, you can’t – you know, there’s something – you have to have it in this country. You must have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers I’m talking about, by taxing foreign countries at levels that they’re not used to. But they will get used to it quickly. And it won’t stop them from doing business with us. But they will have to pay a very significant tax if they send products to our country. Those figures are so much greater than all the figures we are talking about, including childcare, that care will be provided. We will – I look forward to not having any shortages in a fairly short period of time, coupled with the cuts that I’ve been telling you about in terms of waste and fraud and all the other things that are happening in our country.

“Because I have to stay at daycare. I want to stay in childcare. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers I’m talking about, including growth, but the growth is also guided by what the plan is that I just told you about. We’re going to rake in trillions of dollars. And even though childcare is talked about as expensive, it’s not very expensive, relatively speaking, compared to the kind of numbers that are coming in.

“We are going to make this a great country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we are going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about making America great again. We have to do it because we are a failing nation right now. So we will take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”