White House names Scientology mega-donor to Kennedy Center board

[Trish makes all-American art!]

After announcing Wednesday that he would be the new chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center, President Donald Trump yesterday added the names of several other members to the Center’s Board of Trustees.

The list included second lady Usha Vance; Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and her mother, Cheri Summerall; deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino; Allison Lutnick, the wife of the prospective Commerce Secretary; as well as Mindy Levine and Dana Blumberg, wives of the president of the New York Yankees and owner of the New England Patriots, as well as several others.

But the name that made us do a double-take was billionaire Trish Duggan, Scientology’s wealthiest donor.

We were just telling you on Tuesday about Trish being a director of the America First Policy Institute, a dark-money organization that Politico and the New York Times said had quietly become more important than the Heritage Foundation for helping to plan the strategy of the second Trump administration.

The AFPI’s tax records suggested that Duggan is tight with three of Trump’s cabinet picks (Linda McMahon at Education, Brooke Rollins at Agriculture, and Pam Bondi at Justice), and her selection to the Kennedy board only emphasizes just how close she is with the president after becoming, at $5 million, one of the biggest individual funders to his 2024 campaign.

We’ve written for years about Trish and her former husband Bob Duggan, who became billionaires after an investment in a pharmaceutical firm exploded in value thanks to a promising new cancer drug. They split up in 2017, but Trish has continued to be the number one donor in Scientology, called “Patron of Legend” by the church’s leader, David Miscavige. To give you a sense of the kind of money she’s still forking over, we recently found tax records that showed she had given $18.6 million to the IAS, Scientology’s membership organization, in only a single year, 2022.

Trish has a museum dedicated to herself in St. Petersburg, Florida, which shows off her glass art. And now that she’s on the Kennedy board, she no doubt will have some great suggestions for the legendary performing arts center in Washington DC.

Here are some Scientologist performers who might show up on the schedule:

Mark Isham (trumpet) and Stanley Clarke (bass) are legitimately celebrated jazz musicians who happen to be longtime Scientologists, and who have both seemed to step up their involvement in church events in recent years.

Stanley’s already scheduled to play at the Kennedy Center this May, and Mark’s film music has been performed there in the past.

Beck Hansen announced his departure from Scientology in 2019, but his longtime bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen is still in. And what is it about bass players? Billy Sheehan is still quite outspoken about his involvement in the church.

With Scientologist singer Emily Armstrong now fronting the band, could it be time for a Linkin Park jam at the Kennedy Center? And wouldn’t David Miscavige be thrilled to see Trish rehabilitate one of his personal favorites, Broadway singer and convicted child molester James Barbour, with a triumphant appearance at the DC venue?

As for actors, the usual gang — Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, Vonni Ribisi, Erika Christensen, Juliette Lewis — aren’t really known for performing on stage, but perhaps Trish could get them cast in something.

Well, the mind reels. But once again, the main takeaway for us is that we haven’t seen a White House with such friendly connections to Scientology since Bill Clinton was being hustled by Travolta and Cruise in the mid-1990s.

We’re really interested to see what David Miscavige does to try and take advantage of this fertile field that seems to lie before him.

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Bonus items from our tipsters

What’s keeping you from becoming as cool as these OTs, pilgrim?

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