Donald Trump comes up with Google conspiracy theory to explain bad reaction to debate performance

Presidential hopeful attacks ‘biased’ debate chair Lester Holt, and adds rigged search engine results to list of explanations for debate outcome

Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin (Getty)

US presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Google of altering search results to benefit his opponent Hillary Clinton in the wake of the reaction to a televised debate.

He also attacked the debate’s moderator Lester Holt who he said was biased towards Ms Clinton.

His comments follow an underwhelming performance in the debate, with scientific polls, focus groups and the markets handing the win to Ms Clinton.

In the aftermath, Mr Trump insisted every poll showed him as the winner, citing many online polls handing him the victory, but also complained about his microphone and told supporters in a subsequent appearance he had been “holding back” in the debate, because he didn’t want “to embarrass” Ms Clinton.

But he has now offered a new conspiracy theory to explain why many said Ms Clinton won the debate.

Speaking at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, Mr Trump said he believed Google was rigging search results against him.

He said: “Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton.”

“How about that? How about that?” he said to a cheering crowd.

Google has previously issued a statement on similar claims.

A spokesperson said: “Google has never ever re-ranked search results on any topic (including elections) to manipulate user sentiment. Moreover, we do not make any ranking tweaks that are specific to elections or political candidates. From the beginning, our approach to search has been to provide the most relevant answers and results to our users, and it would undermine people's trust in our results, and our company, if we were to change course.”

Mr Trump's claims followed remarks he made to Fox News, in which he said that during the debate, Mr Holt gave him harder questions than he gave to Ms Clinton.

Mr Trump had originally been complimentary about Mr Holt’s performance. “I said good things right after the show, but after reviewing it and after seeing the way he badgered, and even the questions I got… I was disappointed,” he said.

“[He] was much, much tougher on me than he was on Hillary,” he added.

“Anyone who complains about the microphone is not having a good night”, Ms Clinton told reporters after the debate.

In an appearance at a rally in New Hampshire, she said the US is in the midst of “one of the strangest elections” she had ever seen.

A new poll by Reuters/Ipsos released on Wednesday evening found that 56 percent of American adults felt that Ms Clinton did a better job than Trump at their first debate, compared with 26 percent who felt that Mr Trump did better.