ABC Pulls a Story About Trump's Sons and Says Nothing

ABC News ran a story this week asserting that defense companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had collected more than $6 billion in active or promised government contracts since the brothers' firms invested in them. Then the story vanished. No correction, no editor's note, no explanation.

The Daily Wire reported the deletion Thursday, noting that the article's URL now returns an "Oops! Page Unavailable" message and bounces visitors to the ABC News home page. A media newsletter cited by Breitbart News put the scrubbing on Wednesday evening and said the network stayed silent for more than 24 hours afterward. The two accounts conflict on the exact timing; what nobody disputes is that the piece is gone and ABC has not said why.

That matters because a quiet deletion is not the same thing as a correction. A correction tells readers what was wrong. A 404 tells them nothing, while the original claim keeps circulating in screenshots, reposts and the memories of everyone who read it the first time.

The Number That Started the Fight

The disputed passage, as quoted by the Daily Wire, described 1789 Capital — a venture firm that lists Donald Trump Jr. as one of six partners — as having "claimed a major stake in Anduril in June 2025 from a $2.5 billion investment into the company." From there the report built toward the $6 billion contracts figure, and ABC's own post on X repeated the "raked in" framing.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey answered publicly on X on October 7, in a reply to the @ABC account that also named reporter Nathan Lee. Luckey wrote that "1789 Capital has only invested a total of $50M in Anduril, and this so-called 'major stake' is about 1/1000th of the company." He said Anduril had provided the actual numbers to the reporter before publication, called on ABC to correct the record, and then said the network was refusing to do so.

Luckey also offered a theory about the silence: "Admitting they got this wrong would make a legal judgment against them trivially easy." That is his read, not established fact — ABC has given no reason at all for pulling the piece, and speculation about motive remains speculation.

Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for 1789 Capital, pushed back on the implication that investments produced contracts, and told Fox News Digital that ABC never sought comment from the firm before publishing. That account reaches us secondhand, through the Daily Wire's write-up. Donald Trump Jr. was blunter on X: "ABC deleted this article in less than 24 hours because it's false."

It Traveled Before It Disappeared

The story did not sit quietly on a back page. California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared it, telling Americans they "were fleeced," a post the Daily Wire reported drew 1.1 million views. Don Jr. replied directly to Newsom disputing the underlying reporting.

CNN's Andrew Kaczynski, of the network's K-File unit, preserved a screenshot of ABC's deleted post and wrote on X on Friday, citing the Status newsletter: "No note, no explanation, no comment. It had been shared by tons of top lawmakers and democratic officials."

Here is the awkward part for anyone trying to sort out who was right. The $6 billion figure, the $2.5 billion investment claim and the causal link between the family's investments and federal contracts have not been independently verified. Luckey and Henning dispute them. ABC's underlying data is now offline. The network did not respond to the Daily Wire's request for comment.

The Disney-FCC Backdrop

Breitbart placed the episode against a legal fight already underway: Disney, which owns ABC, is asking a federal court to shut down an FCC review of its broadcast licenses, describing the review as a retaliatory campaign by the Trump administration. A judge's decision is pending.

That juxtaposition is framing, not evidence. There is nothing in the public record connecting the license dispute to the decision to delete a news story, and ABC has given no reason for the deletion, in that context or any other.

What happens next is straightforward enough. Either ABC issues an editor's note explaining what was wrong and how it got published, or it does not. Anduril, 1789 Capital and the Trumps may or may not pursue the legal route Luckey hinted at. And the pending ruling in the Disney–FCC case will land on its own schedule, with one more awkward item in the background.