Why is Trump’s ‘historic’ Madison Square Garden rally featuring a major Scientology donor?
At the New York Times, Maggie Haberman wrote yesterday that it doesn’t seem to make a lot of political sense for former President Donald Trump to hold a rally tonight at Madison Square Garden.
New York isn’t a battleground state, after all. But she explained that Trump has wanted to hold a rally at the Garden “for a very long time,” and that it made sense when you consider how important it is to him to see his name in lights at such an iconic venue.
“For years, Mr. Trump has measured the significance of his rally venues in part by who had appeared there before. And his yardsticks were usually not other politicians, but singers and other celebrities,” she wrote.
The speakers list, meanwhile, contains many of the most significant figures in Trump’s political movement: His running mate JD Vance, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and the UFC’s Dana White, to name a few.
In a press release, the Trump campaign called the rally “historic,” and said the program includes “political icons, celebrities, musical artists, and friends and family of President Trump who will all discuss how President Trump is the best choice to fix everything that Kamala Harris broke.”
One of those speakers, Grant Cardone, is not a surprising inclusion based on his campaign contributions and vocal support of the former president, but putting the motivational speaker on the program is remarkable for the simple fact that Cardone is a major Scientology donor and is not shy about discussing his involvement in the controversial organization.
Cardone first got on our radar back in 2011 when he starred in a NatGeo series called “Turnaround King” which had him trying to rescue ailing businesses. When we pointed out that he was also an OT 8 Scientologist who had reached the highest level on the church’s “Bridge to Total Freedom,” we soon heard about Cardone’s willingness to play the heavy-handed enforcer for Scientology leader David Miscavige.
When Miscavige wanted to punish Milton Katselas, the legendary acting coach whose Beverly Hills Playhouse had been a major conduit for actors into Scientology, he turned to Cardone.
Katselas had been involved in Scientology since 1965, but the ties between the Playhouse and the church reached a peak of sorts around 1999, when one of its students, Jenna Elfman, won a Golden Globe for starring in Dharma and Greg.
“When Jenna Elfman won a Golden Globe, that was the height of that connection between Milton and successful Scientology actors,” said Allen Barton, who had been Katselas’s partner at the Playhouse. “Jeffrey Tambor was nominated for an Emmy. Catherine Bell was on a series. Giovanni Ribisi was becoming successful…Jenna did a big public relations spread where she had a photo taken with him.”
But Katselas himself had been stuck on “OT 5” — three levels below the highest step on the “Bridge” — and he seemed to be distancing himself from the church. He had also stopped going to its events.
And so, around 2003, Barton remembered, an intimidation campaign aimed at Katselas began, spear-headed by Grant Cardone, whose wife Elena had been one of the students at the Playhouse.
Cardone put out an email to Scientologists, denouncing Katselas in what is known in Scientology as a “Knowledge Report,” condemning the acting coach officially for his supposed disaffection.
Barton described it as a “jihad.”
“They were pressuring him. Was [Milton] really on board with the church, with Miscavige? All of this stuff that Grant Cardone put out in his e-mail,” Barton said.
At our request, Barton went through Milton’s papers and found more messages from Cardone, including this chilling passage:
You have to be blind not to see the effect these actions had on your school’s statistics, with so many “faithful” leaving you. If you ever feel the group of people you once had influence with are shunning you, I’m your man. You know the saying: “SNIPER ON THE ROOF?”
Barton also found that Katselas had written to the church rather than answer Cardone directly, asking for the “Knowledge Report” to be withdrawn.
I have never met Grant Cardone, and to my knowledge he has never been to a class at the Beverly Hills Playhouse; therefore the data that he must be operating on is second-hand. Additionally, because Cardone offers so many generalized negative statements about me, these then act as 3rd party on a Scientologist who is in good standing, which I am. This in itself is a Crime.
A year after Katselas sent this plea to Scientology, he was dead at 73.
We tried to get Cardone’s side of why he had gone after Katselas in his last years with such strange and intimidating messages, but he didn’t respond to our requests for an interview. Instead, he directed a message to his “haters” on social media, where he has built such a huge following.
“Bring it on, ding dong,” he said.
Since then, we’ve watched as Cardone’s visibility as a Scientology figure grew and as his donations grew as well. He attached himself, for example, to the richest Scientology couple in the world, Bob and Trish Duggan, and then escorted Trish to Scientology events after the pair split in 2017.
In 2019, Cardone filled the seats at Scientology’s Hollywood Celebrity Centre for a rare overflow recruiting event, something Scientology hadn’t seen in a long, long time. And last year, Cardone announced at Instagram that he was hosting a similar recruiting event in Florida, helping to guide at least some of his rabid “10X” followers into the church.
Meanwhile, we’ve noted that Cardone has been branching out from real estate ventures into sketchy stem cell therapy and even more dubious “superhuman” health regimens, including “med beds” that promise miraculous cures and sell for up to $131,000. (Scientologists tend to be skeptical of western medicine and are drawn to alternative health therapies.)
As for his donations to the church, Cardone’s evolving status has been recorded by Scientology’s own Impact magazine, which reported last December that he and his wife Elena have achieved the level of “Diamond Laureate” for $15 million in donations to just one of Scientology’s many initiatives, the International Association of Scientologists. The IAS is Scientology’s membership organization and helps Miscavige pay for the church’s litigation and retaliation programs. (Typically, wealthy donors give millions more for specific “Ideal Org” building projects and other Miscavige programs.)
President Trump has been a featured guest on Cardone’s “10X” investing programs, but the reason that Cardone has made the elite list of Trump supporters at Madison Square Garden is surely as payback for the GoFundMe.
In February, when Trump was hit with a $355 million fraud judgment in Manhattan Supreme Court, Cardone’s wife Elena Cardone created a GoFundMe and titled it "Stand with Trump; Fund the $355M Unjust Judgment.” It raised more than $1 million in a week and became a national news story. Grant, meanwhile, announced that as a result of the court’s ruling he was going to boycott real estate investing in New York as a show of support for Trump.
And most recently, Cardone came up in our mentions here for being lambasted on social media after suggesting that Hurricane Milton might be a weapon sent by the government to harm a red state.
So, for all of those reasons, Cardone’s loyalty to Trump and his huge social media following has landed him on the program tonight at Madison Square Garden. But with little more than a week to the election, it seems startling that a candidate locked in a tight race would want to be seen on stage with any Scientologist figure, no matter how loyal to his cause.
Candidates from both parties tend to stay clear of Scientology, knowing its reputation for controversy and for the reported cases of abuse of its own members. Scientology is strange, based in past-life therapy that promises to help you regain superhuman powers after you can recall who you were on other planets billions and trillions of years ago. For that reason, Scientology’s celebrities are trained not to discuss the actual particulars of Scientology “auditing,” but instead to recommend that the curious buy a book (founder L. Ron Hubbard’s turgid 1950 volume, Dianetics) to find out about the church for themselves.
But Cardone has not been shy, at least, about acknowledging his involvement in Scientology and what, he says, it’s done for him.
“Contrary to the tabloids, trash documentaries, religious bigots, & fake news,” he wrote at his Instagram account last year, “people of all faiths from Christians to Muslims, Jews to Buddhist and everything in between use Scientology principles to improve life without changing their faith or their beliefs.”
We suppose that he’ll keep quiet about such things tonight at the Garden. But you never know.
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Grant Cardone and his real estate investments are a big reason inflation has hit apartment dwellers so badly. Hamhock buys up apartment complexes and raises the rent to pay for the interest and to pay back his investors.
All of that 'profit' comes from the renters and their ever increasing rent. I have no idea what kind of upkeep is done at his apartments, but I expect it to be just enough to keep the rent flowing. Add in the very long lock in on any Cardone investment and his 'management fees' and see how his scam keep going.
grant cardone is such a fraud and a cringelord