March 23--Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday predicted the Cubs will make the World Series this year as he defended team owners the Ricketts family from comments by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The mayor was asked by WLS-AM 890 reporter Bill Cameron about Trump's recent suggestion that he would take out attack ads about the Ricketts family "telling them all what a rotten job they're doing with the Chicago Cubs."
Emanuel, an avowed Cubs fan, jumped on the slow curve lobbed his way. "Well, when the Cubs, in their new stadium, are in the World Series this season, I don't think he'll be having any good seats. So that's number one," the mayor said.
The serially combative GOP front-runner added the Ricketts family to his list of targets in February when he responded to the news that Marlene Ricketts, the family matriarch who lives in Nebraska, had put $3 million into the Our Principles PAC that had spent heavily on ads, mailings and other efforts to oppose Trump. "They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!" Trump wrote of the Rickettses then.
Trump expanded on the idea in an interview with the Washington Post Editorial Board this week.
"I'll start doing ads about their baseball team. That it's not properly run or that they haven't done a good job in the brokerage business lately," he said. Family patriarch Joe Ricketts founded TD Ameritrade.
Emanuel noted he has had disagreements with the Ricketts family, such as when he declined to provide taxpayer money for the renovations they wanted at Wrigley Field. The family has gone ahead with the work.
"But I would say to Donald Trump, the Rickettses are a family that I know as owners invest not only in the field and not only invest in the surrounding area, they invest in the opportunities for our kids. And I would just tell that they are examples of good corporate citizens," Emanuel said.
The mayor, usually not one to avoid a political dust-up, has been somewhat tongue-tied in his responses on Trump's antics, a reticence he explained as not wanting to be part of the attention that feeds Trump's success. "He lives off the infamy that comes from being attacked," said Emanuel, who targeted Trump's "language of hatred" at a Holocaust museum dinner Thursday night.
