Donald Trump once took aim at Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who is his long-time political rival. However, the POTUS’s claim turned out to be ironic and false at the same time. In August, while speaking with the reporters, Trump said, “Pritzker is incompetent. His family threw him out of the business.”
However, this claim was completely untrue as J.B. Pritzker chose to forge his own path, rather than following in the footsteps of his multi-billionaire family. He was never kicked out of the family business.
The Pritzker family later became embroiled in a massive internal dispute with their multi-billion-dollar empire. The New York Times reports that in 2001, Liesel Pritzker, J.B.’s cousin, who was 18 at that time, filed a lawsuit against the family. She alleged that she and her brother, Matthew, have been cheated out of a billion dollars.
Trump: Then I will look at New York in a little while… If we need to we’ll do the same thing in Chicago. We have an incompetent Governor there. Pritzker is incompetent. His family threw him out of the business pic.twitter.com/1zw5PIWLvX
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 11, 2025
This feud began right after Jay Pritzker, who was heading the family business, died in 1999. According to Vanity Fair, Jay already foresaw the future, so he informed his relatives that he did not want them to think about their own pockets only. He even laid out a detailed long-term plan for the family empire.
However, despite his wishes, 11 of the Pritzker family members made a deal over the conglomerate in 2001, so they could get $1.4 billion each. The lawsuit from Liesel came in the same year, in which she claimed that she was not aware of this secret plan. What’s worse is that her relatives even drained her and her brother’s billion-dollar trust funds, as per the lawsuit.
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit was finally settled, with the siblings receiving $900 million in settlement. They initially sought to get their $1 billion back, along with another $5 billion in damages. This is when J.B. Pritzker decided to forge his own oath rather than get embroiled in the family dispute.
JB Pritzker: “I reject criticism from Donald Trump who inherited his money and then went bankrupt six times and then defrauded his buisness partners. And by the way he cheats at golf too.” pic.twitter.com/Sb7lWB5RAT
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) August 11, 2025
This means the claim made by Trump is not just untrue, but it is also ironic. In her 2020 book, Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump, the POTUS’s estranged niece, wrote that her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., wasn’t really fond of Donald. According to her, Fred Trump Sr. wanted Fred Jr. to take over his business empire. Since he was not interested, there was no choice but to hand it over to Donald Trump.
Mary wrote, “Fred [Sr.] could no longer separate himself from his son’s brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested.” This revelation underscores the irony in Trump’s dig at Pritzker, since his own father allegedly saw him as incompetent within their business.
