JPMorgan Chase’s new world headquarters building (L) at 270 Park Avenue is seen from the Top of the Rock observation deck at Rockefeller Center on November 13, 2025 in New York. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
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Earlier this week, President Trump asked Netflix to remove former Obama and Biden official Susan Rice from its board of directors. In Trump’s words to Truth Social, “Netflix should IMMEDIATELY fire the racist, Trump rousing Susan Rice or pay the consequences.” Trump was referring to the Justice Department he chairs, which will have a huge influence on which company ultimately acquires Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), Netflix or Paramount Global.
That politics looms so large in business is a useful way to turn to the subject of this opinion piece: JPMorgan. In recent court filings, the financial institution admitted to closing over fifty personal and business accounts associated with then-former President Trump in February 2021.
According to Trump’s team, JPMorgan’s actions were about the financial institution needing to “distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.” Team Trump’s analysis is very hard to support.
JPMorgan didn’t become the biggest US bank by playing politics with who can and can’t do business with it. If it ever did, there would be hostile takeover attempts between breakfast and lunch for a bank so foolish as to turn its nose up at a large and very well-to-do conservative voting bloc based in the US.
It’s very hard to say that for Trump and his team to do what happened in February 2021 regarding Trump’s political views is the equivalent of a drunk driver tying his arrest to the clothes he was wearing while high. It wasn’t just Democrats who were appalled at Trump’s proximity to the horrors that occurred that day, so were Republicans. No less than his editorial page Wall Street Journal recommended that Trump resign in the Jan. 7 edition Newspaper.
In short, January 6, 2021 changed everything for Trump as a JPMorgan client. And it is impossible to assume that Trump knows why. Just look at his dealings with Netflix and the power he has to make life difficult for the world’s biggest streamer.
That Trump can make such blatant trade-altering threats is something every big business should be thinking about right now. For JPMorgan, the earlier truth is magnified by the myriad federal bureaucracies that regulate it and the banking system more broadly.
Viewed through the lens of February 19, 2021, JPMorgan executives arguably had to factor in not only the reputational challenges of serving Trump, but also consider the possibility that an incoming Biden administration might not take too kindly to the bank’s dealings with the man who tried so hard to overturn Biden’s election.
Lest readers forget, it was the Obama administration in which Joe Biden previously served that created so many problems (think Operation Choke Point) for the big banks, all in relation to the customers they served. In other words, JPMorgan had shareholders to protect against a potential Trump backlash in addition to its reputation. Liberal or conservative politics were out of the question.
What matters is that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a businessman and JPMorgan is a business. Very unfortunately, America’s biggest businesses have been drawn into politics. The former truth apparently made then-former President Trump a potentially problematic client.
Which means the closing of his accounts probably had a lot to do with business and nothing to do with politics. JPMorgan the business has the right and duty to protect her reputation, along with her business franchise, from politicized blows. It seems he did just that a little over five years ago.
