It's 2020 All Over Again: Google Bans Trump Ad Targeting Black Voters

In a replay of its blatant election interference in 2020, Google briefly banned a Trump campaign ad on Friday. The ad targeted Black male voters in rural Georgia, highlighting Biden's abject failure to address illegal immigration and persistently high inflation.

Trump’s Super PAC is running this ad in rural Georgia counties targeting Black men. pic.twitter.com/mcRMkGsqLN
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) May 3, 2024

BIDEN CAMPAIGN: Hello, I’m with the Biden campaign.
VOTER: Yeah, yeah, I voted for Biden last time.
BIDEN CAMPAIGN: That’s fantastic.
VOTER: Is it? Everything costs more: food, gas, rent.
BIDEN CAMPAIGN: Okay, but Biden’s helping pay rent for “newcomers” to America from around the world.
VOTER: You mean illegal immigrants? I’m struggling to pay my bills, but Biden’s paying rent for illegals? They get handouts and I’m paying for it.
BIDEN CAMPAIGN: But Biden can still count on your vote, right?
VOTER: Things were better before Biden. I’m voting for Trump.

Google's action was first noticed by NBC News reporter Andrew Arenge, who documented Google taking the ad down.

NEW: This ad has been removed by Google for a "policy violation". It was live in the Google archive this morning but I just looked and it's now been removed.

Super PAC spent over $15K targeting it at specific communities near Macon, GA after launching it on April 25th. https://t.co/DQnUHgsUuS pic.twitter.com/AnwHwtzlp0
— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) May 3, 2024

Google quietly restored the ad on Saturday.

LATEST: Appears Google has completely reversed their decision from yesterday when they stopped running the Trump Super Pac ads for a policy violation.

All four of the ads highlighted below were flagged in my tweet from yesterday and it appears they've all been turned back on. https://t.co/zAWmf8sHew pic.twitter.com/Eywn29A0Ov
— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) May 4, 2024

No reason was given for the ad being pulled. However, I suspect polls showing Trump gaining with Black voters, Georgia's status as a swing state, and Biden's vulnerability on the issues of illegal immigration and fiscal mismanagement all had a role.

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This behavior by Google is nothing new. During the 2020 election, pulling Trump ads for specious and implausible reasons seemed to be the equivalent of recess time for Google's employees.

60 Minutes reviewed the archive to learn more about President Trump's problematic political ads. We found that over 300 video ads were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy. But the archive doesn't detail what policy was violated. Was it copyright violation? A lie or extreme inaccuracy? Faulty grammar? Bad punctuation? It's unclear. The ads determined to be offending are not available to be screened. We found very little transparency in the transparency report.

Just like in 2020, Google could not articulate what "policy" the Trump ad violated other than it might be effective.