PRESIDENTIAL LOVE, PART 2
‘ Unofficial’ huddle with Trump will be ‘ little more low- key’
WASHINGTON — The Cubs brought their World Series trophy to Capitol Hill on Tuesday and will lug it to the White House on Wednesday for a private meeting with President Donald Trump. It will be more low- key than the televised lovefest former President Barack Obama squeezed in before leaving office.
The Cubs are in town for a four- game series with the Nationals. Cubs co- owner Todd Ricketts told the SunTimes, “The president just knew that we all were going to be here going to baseball games and thought it would be fun to come up and have an unofficial visit with the team.”
The Trump visit “is going to be more social and unofficial and not like the last time,” he said. “. . . This is a little more low- key and it’s more of a friendly visit that what we did before, which was super awesome.”
A White House spokesman, Helen Ferre, said the Cubs meeting with Trump will be closed to the press.
Todd Ricketts, a Cubs board member, was tapped by Trump to be the Deputy Commerce Secretary, only to withdraw his nomination in April, unable to untangle his complex finances.
White House sports- team visits sometimes get tangled up in the politics of the players— and the president.
A Sun- Times poll of 22 of the 27 Cubs players, taken in the clubhouse Tuesday before the second game with the Nats, revealed that 12 will go to the White House and 10 said they would decline.
Obama, who took a day off from being a White Sox fan, gave a rousing official White House welcome to the Cubs on Jan. 16, four days before the Chicago president left office. The celebration was jammed with Chicagoans overjoyed at the Cubs’ winning their first World Series since 1908.
The tradition of a president inviting championship teams to the White House is one that Trump seems to be continuing. Still, it is very unusual for a team to be honored twice — even though the second shot is billed as “unofficial.”
In this case, the Ricketts family are megadonors to Republican candidates and causes — except for Cubs co- owner Laura, who is a big Democratic contributor and fundraiser. The mother of a son born earlier this month, she is remaining at home.
Nebraska Republican Governor Pete Ricketts, another Cubs co- owner, who did not make the Obama White House celebration, will be there.
Hundreds of fans, including Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, Mike Quigley and Paul Ryan, posed for pictures with the World Series trophy in a Senate meeting room Tuesday.