IWhen Donald Trump shared a series of artificial intelligence-generated images this week falsely showing Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president, the former US president was amplifying the work of a shady nonprofit with aspirations to fund right-wing media influencers and a history of spreading disinformation.
Several of the images Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, featuring young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, were the product of the John Milton Freedom Foundation. The Texas-based nonprofit, created last year, bills itself as a press freedom group with the goal of “empowering independent journalists” and “strengthening the foundations of democracy.”
The group’s day-to-day operations appear to revolve around sharing X-share bait and seeking millions in donors for a “scholarship program” chaired by a high school sophomore that would award $100,000 to Twitter personalities including Glenn Greenwald, Andy Ngo and Lara Logan, according to a review of the group’s tax records, investor documents and social media postings. The John Milton Freedom Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on a series of questions about its operations and scholarship program.
After months of retweeting messages from influential conservative media outlets and echoing Elon Musk’s claims that free speech is under attack by left-wing forces, one of the organization’s messages reached Trump and then his millions of supporters.
Disinformation researchers have long warned that generative AI has the ability to curtail the creation of misleading content and threaten election reporting. After Musk’s xAI company launched its largely unregulated Grok image generator last week, there has been a surge in AI content that has included depictions of Trump, Kamala Harris and other political figures. The Milton Freedom Foundation is one of many small groups flooding social media with so-called AI junk.
Nonprofit’s junk material ends up in Trump’s hands
During the rise of AI images on X, the conservative account @amuse published the images AI-generated Swift fan posts to over 300,000 followers. The text of the post, which was labeled “satire,” featured a watermark saying it was “sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation.” Trump posted a screenshot of the @amuse tweet on Truth Social.
The @amuse account has a sizable reach, with about 390,000 followers on X and dozens of posts per day. @amuse is apparently run by Alexander Muse, who is listed as a consultant on the Milton Foundation’s investor prospectus and who also writes a right-wing commentary Substack that includes posts exploring election conspiracy theories. The @amuse account has numerous connections to Muse. The X account is connected to a Substack that posts the exact same articles that Muse posts on his LinkedIn page, which also has the username “amuse,” reflecting his first initial and last name. Muse’s book on securing startup funding, which includes examples of him asking ChatGPT to impersonate Musk and offer business advice, lists that same Substack account as its publisher.
Major accounts, including Musk, have shared and responded to @amuse posts, which have recently included depictions of Trump fighting Darth Vader via AI and sexualized images of Harris. Its top image is currently an AI-generated photo of Trump surrounded by women wearing “Swifties” shirts. The account posts misleading pro-Trump headlines, such as claiming Harris handed over hundreds of thousands of children to human traffickers as a “border czar.” The headlines, like the AI-generated Swifties for Trump images, come with the watermark “sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation.”
The John Milton Foundation for Liberty, named after the 17th-century British poet and essayist, has a small internet presence: a website, an investor prospectus and an X account with fewer than 500 followers. The team behind it, according to its own filings, is made up of five people based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with varying degrees of experience in Republican politics. Muse’s daughter, described as a 10th-grade honors student on the nonprofit’s site, serves as the Milton Foundation’s “scholarship chair.”
The foundation’s stated goal is to raise $2 million from major donors to award $100,000 grants to a “peers” roster of right-wing media influencers. They include people like former CBS journalist turned far-right star Lara Logan, who was ousted from Newsmax in recent years for launching a QAnon-inspired rant claiming world leaders drink children’s blood, as well as the author of an anti-trans children’s book. The organization believes this money would allow these already-established influencers to “increase their reach by more than 10x in less than a year,” according to its investor prospectus.
While only one of the members listed on the foundation’s site mentions the organization on their X profile and none follow their account, the @amuse account has a prominent link to the group’s community page and the foundation often interacts with its posts.
It’s unclear whether the foundation has money to donate, and whether all of the media influencers listed as 2024 fellows are aware of the organization. One Texas-based account that posts anti-vaccine content identifies itself as a “JMFF” fellow in its bio, but none of the others advertise any connection. The Freedom Foundation’s most recent tax records put it in the category of nonprofits whose gross revenue, or total funds received from all sources, range from $0 to $50,000 — well below the millions it seeks.
The organization’s board of directors includes its president, Brad Merritt, who presents himself as a seasoned Republican organizer who claims to have raised $300 million for various nonprofits; its director, Shiree Sanchez, who served as deputy director of the Texas Republican Party from 1985 to 1986; and Mark Karaffa, a retired health care industry executive.
Muse’s experience in digital media appears to be much broader than that of the other members of the nonprofit. In addition to his blog, he claims to have worked with James O’Keefe, the former executive director of the right-wing organization Project Veritas, which was known for its hidden camera operations until He was overthrown last year over allegations of misappropriated funds. Muse, who is described in the prospectus as a “serial entrepreneur,” also writes a blog about how to make money with generative AI.
