Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Premack. On today's show, The Death of NAFTA, and teens are getting worried about how much time they spend on screens.

But first, Trump versus Tech. The president this morning tweeted out a series of attacks

against Google and other big technology companies, accusing them of censoring conservatives and

rigging search results to primarily show negative stories about him and his administration.

Trump even went so far as to suggest that this vast left-wing conspiracy is illegal and that the situation

will, in his words, be addressed. Soon after, he got some backup from top White House Economic

Advisor Larry Cudlow. We're taking a look at it. We'll let you know.

The president of awareness that idea originated in a story on Russian media during the campaign.

It's been discredited. Which media? Russian media.

The Google censoring search results.

This is above my pay grade. I don't know.

Okay, a bunch to unpack here.

First, the discredited Russian story referenced there is something that appeared in Sputnik,

which Kudlow could have learned by using, well, using Google.

And whether or not you want to believe that story, which was actually

written by an American, it shouldn't be above Cudlow's pay grade to know about it, particularly not

if it's something that he's been looking into. Second, it wouldn't actually be illegal for Google

to censor search results if it wanted to, like President Trump suggested. It's a private company,

and one that Trump actually recently defended from European Union arguments and it had violated antitrust rules.

But this, and to me this is the most important, what Trump's doing here is part of what seems to be a larger trend of discrediting not just specific media outlets or specific stories, but the idea of media in general, basically telling supporters, don't believe what you read. Don't believe what's

in your Facebook feed or your Twitter feed or your Google search results. It's all rigged. Now, if

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