President Donald Trump’s recent call to jail Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is just the latest blow in a longstanding personality rivalry between the two real estate billionaires.
The two have fought over wealth, immigration, crime and democracy, with Pritzker recently questioning Trump’s mental fitness and suggesting he has dementia, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
But the clash began with a decades-old hotel dispute in Manhattan involving Pritzker’s late uncle.
The bad blood first surfaced in 1992, during a battle over ownership of the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York. Trump owned half and the Pritzker family of Chicago owned the other half. When the Priztkers insisted and the Pritzkers wanted an expensive upgrade of the property.
Trump saw the demand, which required more money from each owner, as an attempt to take advantage of him at his weakest moment, as his three casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, were in Chapter 11 at the time, according to a Wall Street Journal story published in 2016.
Trump sued the Pritzkers, accusing them of civil racketeering to force him out of the deal, a claim they denied.
“I called Jay [Pritzker] and said, “You’re a bad guy, Jay. I’m going to kick your ass,'” Trump told the Journal in 2016.
Trump later settled the lawsuit and the Pritzkers’ Hyatt Corporation purchased his half of the property for $140 million. Jay Pritzker, JB’s uncle and Trump’s main opponent in the drama, died in 1999.
More recently, the governor of Illinois has clashed with the president over Trump’s claims about crime and immigration problems in the Windy City.
Tensions reached a fever pitch last week after federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided a building on Chicago’s South Shore, resulting in the arrest of 37 people and outrage from local officials over the atypical detention of tenants, including children, during the operation.
The raid raised questions about the rights of landlords and tenants in the city amid an escalation of federal scrutiny. The real deal previously reported.
Trump sent 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and 200 troops from Texas to Chicago this week. Pritzker condemned the measure as unconstitutional and the state sued to obtain a restraining order. Trump responded to Pritzker’s rebukes of immigration agents on the ground by saying that he, along with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, “should be in jail.”
The governor isn’t the only member of the Pritzker family still involved in the longstanding clash with Trump.
JB’s sister Penny, who served as finance chair of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, got engaged in recent months in a separate battle with the Trump administration about anti-Semitism claims at Harvard University, where she now sits on the board of directors as a senior fellow.
– Joel Russel
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