President Donald Trump accused tech companies of being “against me” on Monday, but wouldn’t say if federal regulators would take action against them.
“What they’re doing is wrong and possibly illegal. And a lot of things are being looked at right now.”
In a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Monday night, Trump claimed companies such as Twitter Inc. TWTR, +3.38% , Facebook Inc. FB, +0.00% and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, +1.59% GOOG, +1.58% Google have been working against him.
“They don’t treat me right,” he said of Twitter, claiming that people are having a “very hard” time following his account. “They make it hard to follow,” he said. An attempt by MarketWatch to follow Trump’s Twitter account Monday night was successful in one click.
Trump also blamed Google for his not getting good press. “I used to get the best press in the world,” he said of the days before he was president. “I’m talking about stories that should be good, they make them bad, or they should be great, they make them neutral.”
It was unclear how he believes Google is making news stories bad or neutral.
“They were against me,” Trump said. “Facebook was against me. They were all against me. Twitter was against me . . . I’ve been very good for Twitter. I don’t think Twitter would be the same without what I do on Twitter.”
When asked by Carlson if the Justice Department had a role in finding out if tech companies were acting illegally, Trump demurred.
“Well, they could be, and I don’t even want to say whether or not they’re doing something. . . . There are a lot of people that want us to take action against Facebook and against Twitter and frankly, against Amazon.
When asked if he would take action, Trump replied: “I can’t say that, Tucker. I can’t say.”
There has been speculation that tech companies including Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple Inc. AAPL, +1.83% may face federal antitrust scrutiny
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