President Trump signals US government ‘should be suing Google and Facebook’

President Donald Trump said the US government “should be suing Google and Facebook and all that,” then wagered that “perhaps we will,” in a new broadside against Silicon Valley at a moment when it already faces heightened antitrust scrutiny in Washington.

President Trump did not detail the exact basis for such lawsuits, which he raised after assailing European regulators for their investigations into US tech companies. But the president’s comments during an interview on Fox Business came just weeks after federal competition regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission divvied up scrutiny of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, a move that could suggest the government is in the early stages of an investigation into those tech giants. President Trump also swiped at Google, claiming the search and advertising giant is “trying to rig the election.” He then claimed that Twitter has made it “very hard” for users to find and follow him. But President Trump did not provide new evidence for his latest allegation that the companies exhibit bias against conservatives, which Google and Twitter long have vehemently denied.

“You may need legislation in order to create competition,” President Trump said in response to a question about how his administration might proceed.