Donald Trump’s White House accused the German-owned owner of Politico and Business Insider of “foreign political meddling” after a Business Insider story compared Donald Trump Jr. to Hunter Biden.
The story, published on Monday with the headline “Don Jr. is the new Hunter Biden,” rankled the White House enough for it to directly attack Business Insider’s German parent company Axel Springer using extraordinary language which suggested it could take legal action against it for the story.
The report detailed Trump Jr.’s work with investment firm 1789 Capital. 1789 aims to invest in U.S.-based “anti-woke” MAGA businesses. The report, by longtime business writer Bethany McLean, cited multiple people who discussed the potential for a conflict of interest over the president’s son benefiting from his father’s government office—though it did not allege any illegality—and drew a direct line to Hunter Biden.
Don Jr. is a private citizen with no official role in his father’s White House, but a White House spokesman told MAGA news site Breitbart, “Donald Trump Jr is an innovator and visionary who is successfully reimagining the conservative media eco system—and the left is truly petrified.
“Axel Springer, a foreign-based media organization, is brazenly weaponizing its platforms to sow political division and spread disinformation in a manner that may well stretch beyond journalism, into illegal foreign political meddling.”
The German-based Axel Springer is run by Mathias Döpfner, who himself has appeared at the very least MAGA-curious. He called Vice President JD Vance’s attack on Europe in a speech in February “inspiring.” During Trump’s first term, Döpfner had taken soft approaches to the president’s rhetoric, though he has defended his publications after Elon Musk’s DOGE alleged the government was subsidizing Politico.
Axel Springer lambasted the White House’s accusation in a statement.
“Axel Springer is a global media company committed to press freedom,” a spokesperson said. “Our U.S. newsrooms operate independently without editorial interference, and we stand firmly behind their right to report freely and without intimidation.”
A Business Insider spokesperson said, “Our newsroom operates with full editorial independence, and we stand by our reporting.”
The White House has used its power to target some of its enemies, including executive orders aimed at law firms and an attempt to ice out the Associated Press over its coverage, but it has also simply launched verbal attacks at its enemies through statements.
Axel Springer may have already seen some fallout from the report; the website Florida Politics reported that MAGA-aligned lobbying firm Ballard Partners dropped Axel Springer as a client over the story.
Ballard Partners did not respond to an immediate request for comment, though a federal filing shows it dropped Axel Springer a day after the Business Insider story ran.
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump Jr. attacked the piece in an X post on Tuesday and claimed the difference between he and Biden was that Trump Jr. has “been a businessman and serial investor my entire adult life. He became a “businessman” after his dad got elected.” He also said he solely planned to invest in U.S. businesses.
“Oh, and he’s also a felon crackhead and I’m not,” Trump Jr. wrote. “Thanks for playing, guys!”
An assistant to Trump Jr. did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Hunter was pardoned by former President Joe Biden in December—a development greeted with major outrage by MAGA and particularly by Don Jr.
There are biographical parallels between the two. Hunter is a divorced father of five; both are Ivy League graduates and while Hunter now says he is sober after battling crack addiction, Don Jr. has avoided alcohol since he was at college.
The attacks on Axel Springer come more than a year after billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman attacked Business Insider over a series of stories that showed his wife, scholar Neri Oxman, lifted elements of her 2010 dissertation from other sources without citations.
After Ackman threatened to sue the publication, he dined with Döpfner in February. Three months later, editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson announced he would step down from his role—though denied it had anything to do with the stories.
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