Trump White House Sharpens Its Knives for Politico’s Owner
An article about Donald Trump Jr. has sent MAGA world into a tizzy.
A Different Type of Playbook
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS SENDING aggressive signals about launching a potential federal investigation into the company that owns Politico and Business Insider as retaliation for an article scrutinizing Donald Trump Jr.’s business interests.
In a Tuesday-night story little noticed outside of right-wing media, Breitbart reporter and Trump administration favorite Matthew Boyle wrote that the White House was furious at German media conglomerate Axel Springer. At issue was a Business Insider story titled “Don Jr. is the new Hunter Biden.” In the 1,500-word-long item, reporter Bethany McLean focused on Don Jr.’s venture-capital fund, 1789 Capital, primarily via a collection of quotes from some ethics experts and an anonymous Wall Street investor concerned that the fund could present a conflict of interest.
The story was relatively anodyne, certainly in a world where the president is poised to receive a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign country and boosting a meme coin by offering White House access. And Business Insider isn’t the first media outlet to compare Don Jr. to Hunter Biden.
But Boyle wrote that the Business Insider article had opened up Axel Springer to a “massive” federal review of its ownership, quoting an unnamed outside White House adviser as calling Politico and Business Insider a “German Influence Operation.”
“Talk about your all-time backfires,” Boyle wrote. “Instead of landing a major hit on the president’s son, a German-backed publication has drawn massive federal attention onto its foreign ownership structure and lobbying activities before the federal government.”
The idea that the White House is only now discovering that two major digital media outlets are owned by a German company—purchases that were well-covered in the business press at the time—is ridiculous. Less so is the possibility Boyle’s piece raises: that the Trump administration might retaliate against Axel Springer.
Boyle even goes on to quote an unnamed White House official agreeing with his theory that Axel Springer is under the gun. The official suggested that the Business Insider story could amount to “illegal foreign political meddling.”
A defining characteristic of the Trump 2.0 administration has been its overt attempts to use the tools of the government on—and threats of lawsuits against—major news outlets. It has often worked: Networks have made multimillion-dollar settlements with Trump. Newspapers like the Washington Post have dramatically revamped their editorial pages in apparent attempts at currying favor.
A global media giant, Axel Springer had worked to build inroads with Trump. The company is, by the standards of journalism, pretty conservative. Axel Springer employees in Europe are required to take a pledge to support Israel. And in 2020, CEO Mathias Döpfner asked some of his employees to gather and pray for Trump’s re-election.
But any goodwill it had with the administration is at risk of dissipating.
On Wednesday night, right around the time the Breitbart story ran, well-connected Trumpworld lobbying firm Ballard Partners filed a lobbying disclosure announcing that it dropped Axel Springer as a client, a move first reported by the website Florida Politics. The contract, which started just last month, had already earned Ballard $80,000. But the firm was apparently willing to forgo it over anger with both the Business Insider story and because of Politico reporting that the lobbying firm had been iced out of the administration.
“The Business Insider piece on Don seemed to be such a gratuitous attack there was no way the firm can continue in good faith to represent Axel Springer,” a “source close to Ballard” told Boyle in a follow-up article.
The White House, Axel Springer, Politico, Business Insider, and Ballard Partners all didn’t respond to my requests for comment.
THIS IS NOT THE FIRST SERIES OF BAD STORIES that Axel Springer has had to navigate during the Trump administration. A bizarre confluence of events earlier this year inspired a conspiracy theory on the right that USAID had been secretly funding Politico. In reality, the agency (like others) had been paying for pricey government subscriptions to Politico’s premium offerings, which it promptly canceled when word got out.
But the latest round of controversy represents a much bigger potential threat. The loss of a small portion of Politico Pro revenue is minor compared to the price tag of defending against a potentially drawn-out government investigation into whether your organization amounts to a foreign influence-peddling operation.
Already, a number of Trump world figures are piling on after Breitbart’s article suggesting a groundswell of support for just that type of investigation.
“Wow is this true [AxelSpringer]??” right-wing figure Jack Posobiec posted on X. “Looking bad!”
“Time to drop the hammer on @AxelSpringer!!!” wrote former Trump adviser Jason Miller.
Why has this article in particular earned so much pushback? Based on Boyle’s article, McLean and Business Insider’s unforgivable sin appears to have been comparing Don Jr. to Joe Biden’s famously troubled son.
Boyle spent much of the story disputing the idea that Don Jr. and his businesses are anything like Hunter Biden, calling the comparison “ludicrous.” First-term Trump official Cliff Sims agreed, telling Boyle that comparing the Biden scion to the Trump scion meant Business Insider is a “disgrace to journalism.”
Every accusation is a confession
Based on this and other similar stories it's time to announce an "extinction event" of all those US Constitution pocket copies that Republican congressional members used to not only carry around with them, but brag incessantly about. What a change in a party that now features a real modern-day despot.