Donald Trump criticizes big tech companies again in new interview

President Donald Trump has never been the biggest vocal ally of big tech companies since taking office, and that trend continued this week.

In a Monday morning interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Trump addressed a wide range of topics, with a particular emphasis on his tariff-driven trade war with China. But near the end of the interview, the president gave us some nuggets about big tech companies like Facebook and Huawei.

To kick things off, Trump resurrected the talking point that big tech is biased against him.

“People talk about collusion, the real collusion is between the Democrats and these companies,” Trump said when asked about possible antitrust action against Facebook, Amazon and Google. “They were so against me during my election run, everybody said ‘If you don’t have them, you can’t win.’ Well I won, you know, and I’ll win again.”

Image: HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images

Anti-right wing bias has been a major conservative talking point in recent years, as Trump specifically has called out the likes of Twitter and Google for supposedly suppressing pro-Trump content. Last year, he claimed a loss of Twitter followers proved anti-Trump bias on the platform, even thought the same phenomenon did more damage to Barack Obama’s follower count.

The president has also accused Google of fudging search results to the benefit of the left on similarly flimsy premises. Google has denied this, while Twitter has admitted Trump is actually on a much longer leash than the average Twitter user. 

Later in the interview, Trump addressed antitrust concerns about big tech companies like Facebook and Amazon. Trump called out the European Union for “attacking our companies” via billion-dollar fines for anti-competitive practices. 

However, he also hinted that he thinks tech companies might be too big.

“They think there’s a monopoly, but I’m not sure that they actually think that. They just figure this is easy money,” Trump said of the EU’s practices. “I think it’s a bad situation, but obviously there is something going on in terms of monopoly.”

Finally, Trump closed his tech comments with some thoughts on Huawei and China in general. The Trump administration restricted Huawei’s ability to do business in the U.S. earlier this year because of supposed national security concerns. Consequently, Google revoked the company’s Android license for its line of smartphones. 

Huawei eventually got temporary relief from its government ban, but Trump still views it as a potential problem. He also sees it as a bargaining chip in his trade war with China.

“I do see it as a threat,” Trump said. “At the same time, it could be very well that we do something with respect to Huawei as part of our trade negotiation with China.”

Lastly, Trump used a question about the growing mobile 5G market in the U.S. as an opportunity to claim U.S. tech superiority over China.

“China, as great as they are, and they are great, they don’t have near the capability of our geniuses in Silicon Valley that walk around in undershirts and they’re worth $2 billion apiece,” Trump said. “They don’t have nearly the genius that these people have.”