Trump Rally Funded By Billionaires, Reminiscent Of Pro-Nazi Mass Meeting Of 1939
It is too late for a boycott but consumers can make an ethical statement against trump by turning in their Knicks and Rangers tickets, cashing in any passes for N.Y. Islanders games and avoiding the neighborhood Home Depot.
And at the same time, cancel those unnecessary X and Facebook accounts.
These are just a few of the concerns that are owned by dozens of billionaires who have donated tens of millions of dollars to help make trump’s campaign possible.
Earlier in the year, trump held a rally at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, and another is scheduled for Oct. 27 at Madison Square Garden, just days before the November 5 election. The Nassau Coliseum is home to the New York Islanders while the Garden has the New York Knicks and the Rangers, and is the multi-year residency of Billy Joel.
It may seem unproductive for trump to hold rallies in New York City which is a traditional Democratic stronghold. New York last backed a Republican in 1984 when it voted for Ronald Reagen. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the state by 22 points, and Biden carried it by 23 points.
One reason New York has been selected is that trump owes more than $750,000 to at least four cities and one county for past rallies including most recently in Erie where he has left the city holding the bag. But trump may be able to save by holding the rallies at the Nassau Coliseum and Madison Square Garden as both are owned by powerful, and longtime, trump supporters.
Trump has rented the garden for an undisclosed amount from its owner, billionaire Charles Dolan, who contributed $125,000 to trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. The cost of renting Madison Square Garden can vary widely according to the type of event, date, duration, and additional services required. An Internet search showed that generally, rental prices range from $50,000 to $500,000.
Dolan, 97, a solid trump supporter, is worth a cool $5.6 billion. Dolan founded Cablevision and HBO and currently controls Madison Square Garden Sports, MSG Networks, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Madison Square Garden, Sphere, Radio City Music Hall, BBC America and AMC Networks. In 2016, Dolan sold Cablevision to Patrick Drahi’s Altice USA for $17.7 billion.
Dolan and his wife, Helen Ann, have six children, including James L. Dolan, who is executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company and its professional sports teams, the New York Knicks and New York Rangers and Patrick Dolan, principal owner and publisher of Newsday.
The planned Garden rally will be a homage to the autocratic trump, whose words have been compared with those of another autocrat, Adolf Hitler. Trump has drawn strong criticism for his Hitlerian rhetoric including calling immigrants “poison” and claiming immigrants are genetically inferior, in much the same voice as Hitler deemed Jews and others to be genetically less than human.
Trump has refused to condemn white supremacy, incited rightwing extremists to engage in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol and has and aligned with and dined with Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis.
The planned trump rally has drawn obvious comparisons with a rally held on Feb. 20, 1939, at the old Madison Square Garden on 8th Avenue between 49th and 50th Street and just seven months before Hitler invaded Poland at the start of World War II. The garden was then owned by Gulf and Western Industries Inc. and the rally was sponsored by the German American bund and drew more than 20,000 Nazi sympathizers. The rally featured a huge portrait of George Washington flanked by swastikas. It is entirely likely that a huge portrait of trump will hang in the same place, flanked by American flags.
Many attendees came from Yaphank, Long Island, where the Bund was headquartered and had a summer camp teaching Nazi ideology.
A story the next day in the Jewish American newspaper, Forverts, was headlined “Nazis Hold ‘Americanization’ Meeting with Threats Against Jews.”
“The Hitlerites were permitted to take advantage of the major American patriot and first president, George Washington, for their own purposes,” the writer, whose byline simply read “A Forverts reporter,” wrote. “They were permitted to abuse democracy and Jews, Roosevelt…. They were allowed to sing the Nazi anthem just the same as the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ and to place their swastika flag alongside the American one.”
The 1939 rally was advertised as a “Pro-American Rally,” not to be confused with trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” rally that will honor police, firefighters and teachers who are part of the MAGA movement. Like the 1939 rally, trump’s rally will highlight a nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
The Long Island rally was held on Sept. 18 with trump ranting about the same lies and distortions about inflation, crime and immigration. The refurbished arena is leased by Las Vegas Sands, Inc. The Sands’s owner, Miriam Adelson, a major Trump ally, wants to turn the site into a casino. According to the Federal Election Commission database of Feb. 4, 2020, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, with a net worth of $35.1 billion, have given the most, a total of $218.4 million to trump and various super-PACs supporting trump along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.., Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.,and Sen John Cornyn, R-Texas.
More tycoons supporting trump made their fortunes in finance and investments, than any other industry. And most came from New York, Texas and Florida.
And then there are donors like J. Joe and Marlene Ricketts worth $3.5 billion. As the founder, former CEO and former chairman of TD Ameritrade, J. Joe Ricketts gave trump $2.2 million and may need much more help from a second trump administration after the company agreed to pay $3 billion to settle charges that it failed to properly monitor money laundering by drug cartels. Last year, TD Bank paid $1.2 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging its involvement in an infamous $7 billion Ponzi scheme orchestrated by disgraced financier Allen Stanford more than a decade ago.
Contributions were not necessarily in line with the donors’ wealth.
The chinciest was Richard Yuengling, Jr., owner of the Yeungling beer company. Yuengling is worth $1.5 billion and opened his wallet for a grand total of $500. Right behind Yuengling was Cynthia Cathy, wife of Bubba Cathy, owner of Chick-fil-A. The Cathy fortune totals $7.1 billion and they managed to donate $1,000.
Thomas Duff, considered the richest man in Mississippi, the poorest state in America, is worth $1.4 billion. Duff of Mississippi, gave trump $1,800. Duff and his brother, James, turned a small, struggling company into Southern Tire Mart, the nation’s largest truck tire dealer and retread manufacturer. The brothers inherited Southern Tire Mart from their father, Ernest Duff. Duff is considering running for Mississippi governor.
Richard Schulze, owner of the technology chain, Best Buy, is worth $5 billion and he donated a miserly amount of $2,700. Arturo and Carole Moreno got their net worth of $3.4 billion through billboards and owning the Anaheim Angels. They gave $10,800.
Lori Milken is listed with a net worth of $3.7 billion. She gave just $12,500, and is better known as the wife of Michael Milken, who was indicted in 1989 in an insider trading scandal and was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $600 million. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by trump on February 18, 2020.
Clayton and Mary Ann Mathile are worth $2.3 billion as owners of the Iams pet food company. The Mathiles donated $26,600.
E. Joe Shoen is worth $3.1 billion as the owner of U-Haul and he contributed a paltry $35,500.
Then there are Bernard & Billi Marcus, owners of Home Depot and worth a combined $7.8 billion. They have been generous, giving trump $731,200.
Ronald Lauder and his $5.4 billion Estėe Lauder fortune contributed $200,000.
John Morris, whose fishing empire, Bass Pro, is worth $4.1 billion. He gave $200,000
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of July 2024, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $11.2 billion and was ranked 212th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He donated a healthy $250,000. Thiel is a former employer and mentor of trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio.
Other billionaire donors include Jimmy John and Leslie Liautaud, worth $1.7 billion through their ownership of the Jimmy John’s sandwich chain. They contributed $212,000.
Tilman and Paige Fertitta, worth $4.2 billion as owners of the Houston Rockets, gave $140,000.
Chuck & Diane Bundrant list their source of wealth as fishing but it is a slight understatement as they are worth $1.3 billion as the founder of Trident Seafoods. They gave $50,000.
David Katzman made his $1.2 billion fortune through his company, the SmileDirectClub, manufacturer of teeth aligners. Katzman donated $100,000.
Gary Rollins who owns Orkin pest control has a net worth of $5.5 billion and he gave $25,000.
Dan Snyder is worth $2.6 billion and owns the Washington Commanders NFL team. He contributed $100,000.
Willis and Reba Johnson are worth $1.8 billion and donated $700,000. Willis Johnson is the founder and chairman of Copart Inc., a Fairfield, Calif. company that auctions off wrecked cars for insurance companies and other institutions. The couple donated $700,000. Willis Johnson funded South Dakota’s deployment of national guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Roger Penske, the retired professional auto racing driver, team owner and businessman, is worth $1.9 billion and he gave $45,000 toward trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Trump may have expected more after he awarded Penske a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019.
Trevor Milton is worth $2.1 billion and owns the Nikola electric vehicle company. Milton may have been hoping to change trump’s mind about electric vehicles when he donated $1,000. In July 2021, Milton was indicted on securities fraud and wire fraud and released on $100 million bail. In June 2022, he was charged with another count of wire fraud. In October 2022, he was found guilty on three of the four counts, and received a 4 year prison sentence, a $1 million fine, and may be forced to forfeit part of his property holdings as a part of his sentence. Maybe he hopes his $1,000 donation will win him a pardon if trump wins in November. Probably not on both counts.
Diane Hendricks, co-founder of the ABC Supply roofing company, is listed having a net worth of $20.9 billion. Hendricks gave trump $1.1 million and in 2018, Forbes ranked Hendricks the nation’s richest self-made woman.
In the 2016 presidential election, she gave more than $5 million to the Reform America Fund, a super PAC which opposed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and supported Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Hendricks served as an economic advisor to trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Hendricks reaped significant savings through trump’s 2017 tax law. She spoke at the 2024 Republican National Committee convention and was billed as an “everyday American.”
Phillip and Oleksandra Nikolayenko Ruffin are worth $2.3 billion and gave trump $1.5 million. In 2023, they contributed $2 million to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA Inc.) super PAC. Philip Ruffin owns hotels, casinos, greyhound racing tracks, oil production, convenience stores, real estate, and the world’s largest manufacturer of hand trucks. He is also trump’s business partner.
Ruffin paid $25 million to satisfy trump’s liability in the Trump University judgement. Ruffin admitted to paying trump $28 million in 2018, but claimed it was for “back-fees” related to Trump International Hotel Las Vegas and unrelated to the Trump University case.
Trump was the best man at Ruffin’s third wedding in 2008.