A Writing Prompt × Reverb × Civicus Reflection

Today’s writing prompt asks a simple question:

What is the best excuse you have heard lately?

Mine arrived wrapped in free enterprise, private citizenship, and just enough legal distance to sound respectable.

“They are private citizens.”

Apparently, that settles everything.

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As I watched the investigation, I found myself thinking about someone I had not expected to think about.

Hunter Biden.

Not because these stories are the same.

They are not.

For years, Americans were told that Hunter Biden’s laptop represented one of the greatest political scandals of modern history.

His addiction became campaign material.

His taxes became headlines.

His paintings became an ethics crisis.

His relationships became entertainment.

His failures became evidence against his father.

His pain became public property.

And through all of it, I kept thinking:

Hunter Biden is not Joe Biden.

Children are not products assembled correctly or incorrectly by their parents. Every human being becomes a complicated blend of biology, temperament, love, opportunity, trauma, environment, loss, mistakes, resilience, and personal choice. Parents influence their children deeply, but influence is not ownership, and upbringing is not destiny.

There are no perfect parents.

There are no perfect children.

There are no perfect families from which perfectly adjusted adults emerge untouched by life.

That is not how being human works.

I have shared pieces of my own family history on this blog—not to place anyone on trial, but because I learned from those experiences. Examining our lives honestly can help others examine theirs, but that kind of reflection requires humility.

Without humility, reflection becomes accusation.

Without humility, accountability becomes punishment.

Without humility, someone else’s suffering becomes entertainment.

I never believed Hunter Biden’s addiction proved Joe Biden was a bad father.

It proved that Hunter Biden struggled with addiction.

Those are not the same statement.

I did not look at Hunter Biden’s most chaotic years and think his humiliation should become a national pastime. I hoped he would survive them, grow through them, and find enough humility to look honestly at himself. There is something deeply human about watching a person emerge from public collapse still willing to acknowledge what happened and continue rebuilding.

Redemption has always interested me more than humiliation.

Then something changed.

Suddenly, I was told that the president’s adult children were—

Private citizens.

Interesting.

That distinction seemed considerably less important when the private citizen was named Hunter Biden.

To be clear, Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of Burisma deserved scrutiny. Accepting a highly lucrative position in an industry where he had limited experience, while carrying one of the most recognizable political names in the world, raised legitimate questions about access, influence, and the appearance of conflict.

I can acknowledge that without pretending his addiction, his body, his relationships, his grief, and his family’s private pain needed to become a national blood sport.

That is what consistency looks like.

And consistency requires me to ask why enormous government contracts, taxpayer-backed loans, favorable decisions, and rising company valuations connected to Donald Trump’s adult children appear to inspire considerably less outrage.

This is not really a story about whether Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are allowed to have jobs.

Of course they are.

It is not about whether adult children lose the right to participate in private business when a parent enters public office.

They do not.

It is about what happens when private business becomes entangled with public power.

Donald Trump Jr. joined 1789 Capital shortly after his father won the 2024 presidential election. Companies within or connected to that investment network have since received substantial government contracts, loans, financing commitments, and access to federal programs.

One of the most troubling examples involves Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnet startup in which 1789 Capital acquired an undisclosed stake. Roughly three months later, the Pentagon announced plans for a $620 million loan. ProPublica later reported that government staff understood the direction to accelerate the arrangement as coming from the White House.

A defense startup receives a contract.

A rare-earth company receives a government-backed loan.

A drone company receives an order.

A mining venture gains the promise of federal financing.

A company becomes more valuable.

An investment becomes more valuable.

The president’s children remain private citizens.

The money remains remarkably public.

That is the part the excuse cannot erase.

The money does not need to travel directly from the Pentagon into a Trump family checking account to create enrichment.

It only needs to increase the value of something they own.

That is how equity works.

That is how access works.

That is how institutional conflicts of interest work.

But please, everyone—

Hunter Biden had a laptop.

The internet has spent years speculating about Donald Trump Jr.’s behavior in viral videos—what he might be using, chewing, rubbing against his gums, or carrying.

I do not know what any of it is.

It could be nicotine.

It could be something else entirely.

I genuinely do not care.

What interests me is how quickly the people who transformed Hunter Biden’s addiction into a national morality play rediscovered privacy, restraint, context, and the presumption of innocence when speculation moved closer to their own political family.

Addiction deserves compassion.

Corruption deserves investigation.

Somewhere along the way, we confused the two.

And listening to this investigation, I found myself thinking about another national emergency.

Barack Obama’s tan suit.

On August 28, 2014, President Obama wore a tan suit during a press conference. The color of his clothing became days of political commentary, with at least one Republican congressman calling the choice unpresidential while Obama was discussing foreign policy and the threat from ISIS.

A tan suit.

Beige fabric.

The audacity of taupe.

That was enough to provoke serious discussion about dignity, judgment, patriotism, and respect for the presidency.

Obama was also criticized over Dijon mustard and saluting while holding a coffee cup. Symbols, clothing, condiments, and gestures became evidence of moral and presidential failure.

Now we are looking at questions involving government-backed financing, federal contracts, foreign investment, corporate equity, and the financial interests of a sitting president’s children.

Apparently, that is less alarming than beige.

Funny how the outrage budget always seems to run out just as the dollar amounts get larger.

The more I considered the investigation, the less it looked like a collection of isolated controversies.

It began to look like a pattern.

And once I began noticing the pattern, I could not stop seeing it.

I thought about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Not because a botched monument renovation is identical to Pentagon financing.

It is not.

But the stories rhyme.

A national monument.

A multimillion-dollar renovation.

A no-bid arrangement.

A contractor reported to have prior connections to Trump properties.

Peeling paint.

Algae.

Repeated draining.

A project initially estimated at approximately $1.8 million that reportedly grew to nearly $15 million.

A helpful neighbor, apparently.

Because nothing says responsible stewardship of national history quite like treating the National Mall as though someone down the street recommended a guy who does pools.

The paint peeled.

The algae arrived.

The pool was drained again.

But perhaps the casserole was lovely.

Different story.

Same instinct.

Personal relationships.

Public resources.

Familiar names.

Questionable results.

Another explanation for why everyone should stop being so suspicious.

And the pattern does not end with Donald Jr. and Eric.

It extends beyond one family.

It reaches into advisers, cabinet members, business partners, donors, and political allies, wherever the line between public office and private opportunity has been allowed to blur.

Earlier this year, I wrote The Fragile Currency of Truth: An Open Letter to Secretary Howard Lutnick (Part One and Part Two) after another public contradiction unfolded—one in which speculative claims about Jeffrey Epstein sat uneasily beside the administration’s own official findings.

Different office.

Different person.

Different justification.

Same uncomfortable question.

When does loyalty become more important than truth?

That question has followed me through much of my writing this year. It followed me through The Word Was Translation, as I explored how language can slowly lose its connection to reality. It followed me through When Care Leaves the Room, as I reflected on the moral responsibility of the people surrounding power. Now it follows me here.

Because I am no longer looking at isolated controversies.

I am looking at a governing culture.

A culture in which language disguises wrongdoing. Relationships replace guardrails. Excuses replace accountability. Loyalty replaces truth.

Public servants owe the country more than legal technicalities and carefully arranged distance. They owe us stewardship—of truth, of institutions, of public trust.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have also traveled through that same blurred territory between public influence, private business, international relationships, and personal ambition.

Kushner left the White House and established a private equity firm that received billions of dollars in foreign investment, including $2 billion from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince. The ethical question is not difficult to identify: when someone moves from shaping American foreign policy to accepting extraordinary financial backing from foreign governments affected by that policy, public scrutiny is not partisan harassment.

It is the minimum.

Ivanka moved repeatedly between the White House, international diplomacy, trademarks, private business interests, and the Trump family brand.

Each individual arrangement can be explained.

Each connection can be isolated.

Each concern can be dismissed as jealousy, coincidence, or partisan persecution.

One coincidence invites curiosity.

A dozen coincidences invite investigation.

At some point, refusing to look is no longer open-mindedness.

It becomes selective blindness.

I have written before about how language can stop describing reality and begin replacing it.

Terms such as freedom, corruption, democracy, persecution, patriotism, and private citizen can be emptied of consistent meaning and refilled according to whoever needs protection at the moment.

“Private citizen” is doing extraordinary work here.

When Hunter Biden traded on his family name, his private citizenship offered no shelter.

When Donald Trump’s children hold investments that may benefit from their father’s government, private citizenship suddenly becomes sacred.

The words did not change.

The people protected by them did.

That is not a principle.

That is an exemption wearing a principle’s clothing.

I have also written about what happens when care leaves the room.

I wrote about the responsibility of the witness and the ethical obligations of those closest to power.

But perhaps I did not go far enough.

Because when I look at Donald Trump’s family, I do not see people protecting him from public humiliation.

I see people benefiting from the conditions that keep him in power.

They allow him to stand beneath the lights and unravel.

They allow him to ramble, rage, contradict himself, confuse names, distort events, and become the subject of international mockery.

Every stumble becomes strategy.

Every confusion becomes brilliance.

Every concern becomes persecution.

Every person who questions what they are watching becomes an enemy.

That is not care.

Care requires truth.

Care requires limits.

Care sometimes requires someone close enough to say:

Enough.

But truth might threaten the arrangement.

Limits might interrupt the access.

And leaving power might close the door through which so much opportunity appears to be flowing.

So he remains onstage.

The family remains nearby.

And the value keeps rising.

Donald Trump receives the applause.

His children receive the access.

His friends receive the opportunities.

His neighbors receive the work.

The public receives the bill.

They do not appear embarrassed by what is happening.

They appear invested in it.

Perhaps the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Perhaps it formed a holding company beneath it.

Whether history ultimately judges Donald Trump as one of America’s most corrupt presidents is not for me to decide.

What I can say is this:

I have never watched another modern presidency generate this many recurring questions about the intersection of family wealth, public office, private influence, foreign investment, and government power.

And still, somewhere in the distance, someone is shouting:

Hunter Biden’s laptop!

Look at the laptop.

Look at the paintings.

Look at the drugs.

Look at the troubled son.

Look at the tan suit.

Look at the mustard.

Look at anything except the investment fund.

Do not look at the Pentagon financing.

Do not look at the federal contracts.

Do not look at the companies becoming more valuable.

Do not look at the foreign money.

Do not look at family members converting proximity into equity.

Do not look at the friends, neighbors, advisers, investors, and loyalists gathering around the machinery of government with their hands conveniently extended.

Just keep staring at the laptop.

In The Word Was Translation, I wrote that understanding is not the opposite of accountability.

I believe that even more today.

Understanding how people arrive at harmful conclusions matters. Understanding how propaganda shapes language matters. Understanding why people protect certain stories matters. But understanding cannot become an excuse for refusing to name what is directly in front of us.

Curiosity is not surrender.

Compassion is not blindness.

Humility is not silence.

And accountability that applies only to political enemies is not accountability.

It is propaganda.

I am not interested in defending Democrats.

I am not interested in defending Republicans.

I am interested in defending principles.

Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma deserved scrutiny.

His addiction deserved humanity.

The Trump family’s relationship with public money deserves investigation.

If family influence mattered then, it matters now.

If appearances of conflict mattered then, they matter now.

If private citizenship did not end the conversation then, it cannot end the conversation now.

Principles do not become optional when the jersey changes.

So, what is the best excuse I have heard lately?

“They are private citizens.”

Maybe.

But that is not the real question.

The real question is whether public power is creating private wealth.

Corruption does not always arrive carrying a briefcase full of cash.

Sometimes it arrives as an investment.

A board seat.

A government-backed loan.

A lucrative contract.

A no-bid project for a helpful neighbor.

A perfectly respectable explanation.

And while the country is ordered to keep staring at Hunter Biden’s laptop, the money keeps moving behind the curtain.

That is more than an excuse.

It is the trick the excuse was designed to hide.