WTF Just Happened Today

Monday, August 19, 2019

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1/ Trump claimed – without evidence – that Google "manipulated" votes in the 2016 election after a Fox Business segment aired Senate Judiciary Committee testimony in June of a psychologist claiming that "biased search results generated by Google's search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported)." The authors of the study looked at search results for 95 people over the 25 days preceding the election and evaluated the first page for bias. They did not describe their process, provided no data on the searches, or discuss how Google personalizes search results on past searches, preferences, and location. Trump's tweet also appears to refer to documents leaked to conservative group Project Veritas. The documents, however, do not contain outright allegation of vote manipulation or attempts to bias the election. (CNBC / Washington Post / TechCrunch)

2/ The Federal Election Commission chairwoman called Trump's repeated allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 election unsubstantiated and "damaging to our democracy" because they "undermines people's faith" in the election system. Ellen Weintraub's comment came after Trump asserted at a rally in New Hampshire that voter fraud is the reason he lost the state's four electoral votes in the previous election. "There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in 2016," Weintraub added, "or really in any previous election." (Politico / CNN / Axios)

3/ Trump falsely claimed that he has the authority to make decisions about which TV networks can host the presidential debates during the general election. While complaining that Democrats had barred Fox News from hosting or televising the 2020 Democratic primary debates, Trump warned that he could do the same to Fox News in the general election if the polls about his reelection chances coming out of the network don't change for the better. "My worst polls have always been from Fox," Trump said. "And I think Fox is making a big mistake, because, you know, I'm the one that calls the shots on that — on the really big debates." (Politico)

• Trump is "not happy" with Fox News after a recent poll by the network showed him losing head-to-head matchups with four of the top Democratic candidates. Trump said he didn't "believe" the poll. (Politico)

4/ Thousands of union workers at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania were ordered to attend a Trump speech last week or lose some of their weekly pay. The rules given to workers stated that attendance was "not mandatory," but only those who arrived at 7 a.m., swiped in with their work IDs, and stood for hours waiting to hear Trump speak would be paid for their time. "NO SCAN, NO PAY," said the memo, which also prohibited the workers from doing "anything viewed as resistance" during the event. (