The Trump Family Business Is More Transparent Than the Biden Variety

Responding to: Trump and Truth Social — James Freeman · 2026-07-17

What the Piece Argues

James Freeman’s column concedes that Trump Media’s stock has cratered and argues this weakens the case that the president is using his position for self-enrichment. The piece then pivots to what Freeman presents as a double standard: he contrasts Trump’s “voluntary restraints” on foreign deals during his first term with what he characterizes as the media’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, arguing that the press has given both parties “every reason to misbehave.” At its core, Freeman’s argument is that the Trump family business is “more transparent and more exposed to market risk” than the Biden variety, and that the media’s focus on Trump’s conflicts is partisan bias rather than principled scrutiny.

Receipts

The framing makes a whataboutism-and-deflection move: concede a narrow point about a stock price to argue the entire corruption question is media-driven hysteria, then shift blame to the other side’s documented corruption.

The framing wants you to believe

• The Trump family business is “more transparent” than the Biden variety
• Truth Social’s stock decline proves no corrupt self-enrichment is occurring
• The real scandal is the media’s 2020 suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story

What’s really going on

• “Transparency” means disclosing where money comes from. Trump’s businesses don’t disclose foreign clients, fought tax-return release for years, and ran through a trust that kept his income rights intact. That’s the opposite of transparency.
• A stock price cratering doesn’t prove absence of corruption; it proves the market found the attempt less profitable than the grifter hoped. The corruption question is the attempt, not the outcome — whether the office was used to try to generate private gain.
• Hunter Biden whataboutism treats one party’s documented ethics failures as exoneration of the other’s. The honest frame: both warrant scrutiny. This piece is structured to shrink scrutiny on Trump, not expand it on Biden.

The DEFCON Ladder

DEFCON 5 — Polite Reframe

When to use: a good-faith conservative who read the column and thinks “well, the stock did crater, maybe there’s nothing to see here” — a persuadable moderate at Thanksgiving dinner

Let’s talk about the argument the column makes, because it’s a common one and it sounds reasonable until you sit with it.

The claim is that because Trump Media’s stock declined, there’s no corruption to investigate. But that’s not how corruption works. The question is whether the office was used to create private gain — not whether the gain was successfully realized. A bank robber who trips on the way out the door is still a bank robber.

The claim that the Trump family business is “more transparent” than the Bidens’ is not supported by the record. Trump refused to divest. He fought every effort to see his tax returns. His businesses don’t disclose foreign clients. The Bidens’ conduct may also warrant scrutiny — that’s a separate question — but the existence of one party’s ethical failures doesn’t prove the other party’s ethics.

The column’s structure is a whataboutism defense: conceding a small point to argue a larger one that doesn’t follow. The generous reading is that Freeman genuinely believes the media is biased. But the evidence he offers doesn’t hold up to a simple question: if the Trump family business is so transparent, why does it refuse to disclose its foreign clients?

DEFCON 4 — Firm Moral Superiority

When to use: a mixed-faith reader who’s sympathetic to the column’s framing but can be reached with a firm moral challenge — the Substack or op-ed audience

The column’s argument is a magician’s trick: wave the stock price in one hand while the other hand conceals the whole structure of the question.

The question has never been “did Trump Media’s stock go up or down.” The question is: did the president of the United States use his office to create a vehicle through which foreign actors and domestic interests could route payments to his family? The answer to that question does not depend on whether the scheme succeeded. It depends on whether the scheme was attempted.

And the record is clear on the attempt. Trump launched Truth Social after being banned from other platforms. He returned to office. He then had the power to make policy announcements that would move markets — and his own media company’s stock would move with them. The column concedes this is “a clear potential conflict of interest” and then waves it away with a stock chart.

The whataboutism to Hunter Biden is the oldest trick in the corruption-defense playbook: if everyone is dirty, no one is dirty. But the principle isn’t “everyone does it.” The principle is “no one should do it.” The column doesn’t want to argue that principle. It wants to argue that Trump is less bad than Biden, which is a race to the bottom that the American people are not required to run.

The moral claim the column wants to make — that Trump is more transparent — is falsified by the simplest of facts: Trump refused to release his tax returns for years, fought every subpoena, and ran his businesses through a trust structure that preserved his income rights while claiming he was “divested.” That’s not transparency. That’s the opposite of it.

DEFCON 3 — Mockery and Ridicule

When to use: the bystander audience — people watching the exchange who need to see the column’s argument dismantled with humor and precision — a social-media thread or water-cooler moment

The column’s argument is: “Look, Truth Social’s stock went down, so the corruption isn’t working. Also, Hunter Biden. Case closed.”

That’s not a legal argument. That’s a child saying “but he started it” while the teacher is trying to figure out who set the school on fire.

The “transparency” claim is doing some heavy lifting here. Let’s define transparency: it means the public can see where the money comes from and where it goes. Trump’s businesses don’t disclose foreign clients. Trump’s tax returns were hidden for years. The Trump Organization’s foreign deals during his presidency were revealed only through lawsuits and investigative journalism. If that’s transparency, I’d hate to see what the column considers opaque — maybe a sealed vault at the bottom of the ocean?

The Hunter Biden pivot is so predictable you could set a clock by it. Anytime someone in the conservative media ecosystem is asked to defend Trump’s conduct, the response is: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE LAPTOP.” The laptop is not a defense. The laptop is a change of subject. And the column knows it.

DEFCON 2 — Aggressive Villainization

When to use: the reader who’s already convinced the column is propaganda but needs the indictment sharpened — the activist preparing to respond

The column is doing the work of laundering a corruption defense through respectable-sounding prose. Let’s name the operation.

The move: concede a stock decline to establish credibility, then use that credibility to argue that the entire corruption frame is media bias. The whataboutism to Hunter Biden is not a tangent — it is the structural purpose of the piece. The column exists to create a verbal association between “Trump’s conflicts” and “Biden’s corruption” so that the reader walks away thinking both sides are the same, and therefore neither deserves scrutiny.

The column’s claim that Trump is “more transparent” is unsupported by the record — and what the record shows is the opposite. Trump’s tax returns were pried from him by Congress. His businesses’ foreign clients were revealed by journalists and lawsuits. The Trump Organization’s foreign deals during the first term were documented by CREW at $13.6 million in payments from foreign governments — a sum the Constitution’s emoluments clause was designed to prevent.

The column is the exact same shape as the Biden-family defenses the right has spent years denouncing. “There’s no evidence of a crime” — the same words, the same structure, the same function. It is a corruption defense written in the voice of a corruption accuser.

DEFCON 1 — Nuclear Satire

When to use: the bad-faith actor who’s made this argument a hundred times and needs to see it rendered grotesque — the catharsis-for-allies moment

The column has discovered a new anti-corruption principle: a president is innocent of self-dealing if his stock price goes down. This is the “I tried to rob the bank but the vault was empty, so really I’m the victim here” defense, and it is being served on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal as if it were reasoned argument.

Let’s apply the column’s logic to other contexts. A coach who bet on his own team and lost? No corruption — the bet didn’t pay off. A CEO who made an insider trade that lost money? Clean hands — the market didn’t cooperate. A politician who took a bribe but the briber’s project failed? Innocent — the corruption didn’t work.

The column’s “transparency” claim is a word that has been hollowed out and stuffed with the opposite of its meaning. A transparent business entity is one that discloses its financial relationships. The Trump Organization does not. The Trump businesses that took foreign payments during the first term did so through structures designed to obscure the source. The Trump tax returns that were finally released showed foreign accounts in the UK, Ireland, China, and Saint Martin, along with a pattern of losses and questionable deductions. If that’s the transparency standard, then the Mob is “transparent” because the FBI has to subpoena every bank in three states to figure out who actually owns the strip club.

The grotesque image: imagine a man standing in a burning building, pointing at a smoking grill in the neighbor’s yard, shouting “THAT’S WHERE THE REAL PROBLEM IS.” The fire department arrives and he waves his stock certificate at them. “SEE? THE FIRE ISN’T THAT BAD. THE SHARES ARE DOWN.” The building collapses around him. He is still pointing at the neighbor’s grill.

DEFCON 1+ — Prophetic Indictment

When to use: the reader who needs the moral weight of the argument — the one who will be moved not by mockery but by the prophetic register that names what has been done and what it costs the soul of the nation

The column asks us to believe that the measure of a man’s corruption is the success of his enterprise. If the stock falls, the sin is forgiven. If the deal goes bad, the attempt is forgotten. This is a theology the prophets would recognize: the worship of outcomes, the idolatry of the market’s verdict, the refusal to judge the heart by the act.

But the witness of the canon is otherwise. Amos did not ask whether the scales were balanced only when the inspector was watching. Jeremiah did not inquire whether the lying pen of the scribes had produced a profit. The question was always the same: what did you do with the power you were given?

The president was given the power of the office. He used it to create a financial instrument — a company whose value would rise and fall with his words. The column’s defense is that the value fell. But the scripture does not say: “Blessed is the one who attempted self-dealing and failed.” It says: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

The soul of the office is what is being forfeited here. The emoluments clause is not a technicality. It is the constitutional recognition that a president must serve the public, not his pocket. Every foreign payment that flows through a Trump business — the CREW report documents $13.6 million from foreign governments during his presidency — is a small death of that principle. Every column that defends the practice by pointing at the other side’s sins is a burial of the standard.

The column calls the Trump family business “more transparent” than the Biden variety. But the witness of the record is otherwise. The tax returns were hidden. The foreign clients are unnamed. The trust structure was a veil. The transparency Freeman celebrates is a transparency of the column’s own invention, not a transparency of the public record.

The judgment the prophets would pronounce is this: you have called evil good and good evil. You have put darkness for light and light for darkness. You have taught the nation that the standard of conduct is not the act but the stock chart, and you have done it in the measured tones of respectable opinion.

The worm that does not die is the slow corruption of the norm — the thousand small defenses of the indefensible that make the next indefensible act easier to swallow. The column is not the worm. It is the feeding of the worm.

DEFCON 1++ — Profane Scorched-Earth

When to use: the reader who needs the full catharsis, the gloves-all-the-way-off apex — the moment when the measured response has been tried and the situation demands the release valve

“More transparent than the Biden variety.” That’s the sentence. That’s the hill the Wall Street Journal editorial page chose to die on. A sentence so fucking stupid it could only have been written by someone who assumed the reader wouldn’t check.

Let’s check.

Trump’s tax returns: hidden for years, released only when Congress subpoenaed them. Trump’s foreign clients: undisclosed, revealed only by lawsuits and reporters. Trump’s “voluntary restraints”: a PR gesture that didn’t stop foreign governments from spending $13.6 million at his properties while he was in office — with Trump administration officials attending their events there. Transparency? The only thing transparent about the Trump family business is the contempt it has for anyone who believes the word means anything.

The stock-market argument is the dumbest thing in the piece, and that’s saying something in a piece that also includes the Hunter Biden whataboutism. “The stock went down, so there’s no corruption.” By that logic, every failed crime is a virtue. Every unsuccessful burglary is a moral good. Every attempted fraud that didn’t pay off is a testament to the fraudster’s character. The column is not just wrong — it’s stupid. It’s the kind of argument that should embarrass the person who wrote it, the editor who approved it, and the publication that printed it.

The piece is a grift-defense written by a man who used to be an investor advocate at the SEC. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a subpoena. The investor advocate is now advocating for the proposition that transparency means “we don’t have to show you the books because the stock price went down.”

The profane truth is this: the column is a monument to the corruption it pretends to scrutinize. It does the work of the thing it claims to be investigating. It is the PR arm of the self-dealing president, rendered in the sober tones of respectable conservatism, and it is a fucking disgrace.

The judgment: the column is not journalism. It is not analysis. It is a defense brief for the proposition that the president can use his office for private gain as long as the gain doesn’t materialize. And the defense brief is graded on the curve of the other side’s sins. The curve is the corruption. The curve is the column. The curve is the whole rotten game.