Google execs lament Trump win in leaked video

Google executives and employees can be seen making disparaging comments about President Trump’s 2016 election victory in a leaked video recorded shortly after Trump’s win.

The video of Google’s all-hands staff meeting following the election, which was provided anonymously to right-wing news site Breitbart News, shows executives including co-founder Sergey Brin comparing Trump voters to “extremists” and authoritarian movements.

In the hour of video footage, Brin is shown saying he is “deeply offend[ed]” by Trump’s election due to his status as an immigrant, and added that Trump’s politics conflict “with many of [Google’s] values.”

“Most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad,” Brin says near the beginning of the meeting.

{mosads}Google’s senior VP for global affairs Kent Walker went on to characterize Trump voters as governed by “fear,” which he said was “fueling concerns, xenophobia, hatred, and a desire for answers that may or may not be there.”

Asked later on in the video whether any of the executives saw a positive benefit from Trump’s election, the group laughed before Brin responded: “Boy, that’s a really tough one right now.”

The video’s release comes following Google CEO Larry Page’s failure to attend hearings in the House and Senate related to Russia’s election interference and conservative claims of bias against right-leaning users and news sources on Facebook, Twitter and other tech platforms.

Google released a statement Thursday denying that the video obtained by Breitbart showed any instances of such bias being written in to Google’s platform.

“At a regularly scheduled all hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season,” the statement to Breitbart reads.

“Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products,” a spokesperson added.

“To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint.”

House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) slammed the company on Wednesday before the release of the video, accusing Google of “controlling the internet” during an interview with Fox News.

“Ninety percent of all searches come through Google. If you don’t make that first page on Google, only 5 percent go to the next,” he said. “They’re controlling the internet in a much different way.”