Paul Sullivan: No team has closer ties to President Trump than the Chicago Cubs. Will fan support stay strong after the scenes from the US Capitol?

Whether you’re buying a ticket to a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field or paying a cable bill that includes a fee for Marquee Sports Network, some of your money is going to the Rickettses.

What they do with that money is up to them.

Some of the revenue obviously goes to fielding a baseball team, while some might go to ballpark upkeep or to Cubs Charities. There are any number of expenses incurred in running a multibillion-dollar operation such as the Cubs, and none of us really can know for sure where our money is headed once it’s in their hands.

What we do know is no other team in professional sports is as intertwined with President Donald Trump’s administration as the Cubs, from co-owner/board member Todd Ricketts serving as the fundraising chairman for Trump’s reelection campaign and limited partner Betsy DeVos in the cabinet as education secretary.

For the last four years, it was a minor annoyance to those fans who opposed Trump’s policies, lies and angry rhetoric. But after the disgusting events of Wednesday, where a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and disgraced our nation, many see those who support Trump as complicit.

And that includes Todd Ricketts and Betsy DeVos.

As a Cubs fan, there’s not much you can do to change history. What’s done is done. Trump will be gone on Jan. 20, and this dark chapter in American history will finally end. And if you held your nose and supported the team anyway, your money is already spent.

But some day the doors of Wrigley Field will open again to fans, and once again you will be faced with a thorny dilemma.

Will you continue to give your money to a business owned by the Ricketts’ family? Will you passively follow the Cubs without going inside Wrigley? Will you look for a new team to support altogether?

Or will you just stick with the status quo, rationalizing that your money is going to your favorite players — not the owners — or to co-owner Laura Ricketts, whose political views are closer to your own?

With COVID-19 still raging and the return of fans to ballparks up in the air, Cubs fans will have plenty of time to mull their options.

The Cubs aren’t the only owners in bed with politicians.

Fans of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream who oppose Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler also have a decision to make. Loeffler, who was defeated in a runoff for her Senate seat, is co-owner of the Dream, whose players famously posed together in a photo wearing T-shirts supporting her opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Los Angeles Lakers star Lebron James tweeted the photo after Loeffler’s defeat, writing: “Think I’m gone put together an ownership group for the The Dream. Whose in?”

Politics and sports aren’t supposed to mix, as readers often remind me when I criticize someone they support. But there’s no question many owners make it impossible to separate themselves from their political views. According to an ESPN analysis, 144 owners and commissioners from the top four professional sports leagues have publicly contributed almost $45 million of disclosed donations to federal elections since 2015.

That’s a lot of money from the $11.50 hot dogs now going to politicians, some of whom might be spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories, as Trump and Loeffler repeatedly have done.

Truth is important, and when you associate with someone spreading falsehoods, it’s a poor reflection on your organization.

The Cubs are TV partners with Sinclair Broadcasting on their Marquee Sports Network. Though the network supposedly is immune from the conservative views of Sinclair’s news division, it’s hard to separate the two. After the mob attack on the Capitol on Wednesday, a Washington Post reporter tweeted: “Sinclair Broadcast Group’s news report about today’s events begins this way: “Pro-Trump protesters, their ranks likely augmented by far-left infiltrators...”

Those are the kind of baldfaced lies that led to the mob scene in the first place.

It’s easy for fans to call for the Rickettses to sell the Cubs, but we all know that’s not going to happen. When the Rickettses were about to take over 12 years ago, the four siblings sat down for a group interview at Wrigley Field, and I asked why they wanted to own a baseball team.

“First of all, who wouldn’t want to own the Cubs, right?” Pete Ricketts said. “TD Ameritrade, it was fun when it was a family business, but it’s not that anymore, and I thought that having the Cubs was something that could turn into that family business, that we could all focus the entire family, not just the four of us but our kids and on down the generations, something we as Rickettses could do together.”

Pete later became governor of Nebraska. And when asked Wednesday by the Omaha World-Herald whether Trump “fanned the flames” of violence in the Capitol attack, he responded: “Everyone is responsible for their own actions.”

Pete no longer is a co-owner of the Cubs, but the Ricketts family is here to stay. And perhaps the next generation will be making decisions that your own kids will be railing at in a few decades.

Actions have consequences, and after Wednesday’s nightmarish events in Washington, it’s impossible for some to untie the knot that connects the Cubs to Trump. But the Rickettses knew what they were getting into when they hitched their wagon to him.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions.