Donald Trump Threatens to Blast Chicago Cubs Owners in TV Ads

Prickly presidential front-runner Donald Trump is so annoyed the matriarch of the Ricketts family spent millions of dollars to thwart his campaign, he's threatening to buy ads blasting the baseball team run by her son: the Chicago Cubs.

Marlene Ricketts put $3 million earlier this year into the Our Principles PAC, which has funded a series of hyper-critical, scathing ads about Trump. The ads dominated the airwaves ahead of the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. They also appeared on Illinois TV stations before the March 15 primary.

Monday, Trump threatened to retaliate.

"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," the New York real-estate billionaire and reality show TV star told the Washington Post editorial board.

Marlene Ricketts is married to Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade. These days, Ricketts runs a weekly newspaper company and news website in Chicago and New York called DNAinfo. They are active in conservative causes. The family owns the Chicago Cubs through a family trust and the children sit on the board. Their son Tom is Cubs chairman. The family's wealth is estimated at $4.5 billion.

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For Marlene and Joe, their latest cause is taking down Trump.

"I'll start spending on them," Trump told the Post. "I'll start taking ads telling them all what a rotten job they're doing with the Chicago Cubs. I mean, they are spending on me. I mean, so am I allowed to say that?"

Last year, the Cubs went to the National League Championship series, exceeding all expectations and ginning up Cubs Nation for an unlikely shot at the World Series. The Ricketts clan also added a jumbo video screen to Wrigley Field as part of a $500 million ballpark renovation.

By all accounts except Trump's, the Cubs seem to be doing pretty well.

The Post editorial board asked Trump, who has become the bane of the GOP establishment, to elaborate.

"I don't know these people. Those Ricketts," Trump said. "I actually said they ought to focus on the Chicago Cubs and, you know, stop playing around. They spent millions of dollars fighting me in Florida."

Making ads such as this one.

Still, Trump won Florida. And he leads in the GOP delegate count and has exceeded expectations himself in winning most of the Republican primary contests. Now, only Ted Cruz and John Kasich stand in his way.

And, apparently, Marlene Ricketts.

She isn't on Twitter. Last month, through an old-fashioned spokesman, she released this statement about Trump after he blasted the family on Twitter.

“Marlene Ricketts shares the disappointment of many Trump supporters who believe that our leaders in Washington have failed us, and also believes our next president must be a principled leader. In her view, Donald Trump has not been a consistent conservative and therefore would be unpredictable as our party leader,” said Brian Baker, identified as a political adviser to the family.

She also gave another $1 million to the super PAC, according to the Federal Election Commission. So did Joe. And several other rich folks have ponied up recently, too, according to the Omaha World-Herald, which reported that Paul Singer, a New York hedge fund manager, kicked in $1 million, as did Texas real-estate tycoon Harlan Crow.

The Our Principles PAC was founded and is managed by Katie Packer, who helped run Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012. One of the ads crafted and aired by the PAC highlights Trump's sexist, misogynist, abusive language.

Romney, of late, has become very vocal in trying to block Trump from winning the nomination, too.

Trump has encouraged his supporters to take whacks at protesters at his rallies. Several highly publicized episodes of his security and campaign staffers choking, grabbing and threatening protesters have elicited condemnation from fellow Republicans.

Trump's stated policies — building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico; barring all Muslims from entering the U.S.; expanding the use of torture against enemies; deporting the children of immigrants — have drawn increasingly sizable protest efforts at his appearances and criticism from leading Republicans.

Trump's critics say his positions smack of fascism.

In February, when the Ricketts PAC first came to light, Trump tweeted a veiled threat against the Ricketts family

Tom Ricketts, chairman of the Cubs, was asked to respond at the Cubs Convention ahead of spring training after the tweet was made.

"It's a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom," he replied. "The fact is whether it's my mom or my dad on his Ending Spending (PAC) or my sister (Laura) on (supporting) marriage equality, or my brothers on what they do, or what we do with the team, we're pretty much an open book.

"We stand up for what we believe in. We support the causes that we think are important.

"That's what America should be. That's who we are."