circleWhen Donald Trump shared a slew of AI-generated images this week falsely depicting Taylor Swift and her fans as supporting his presidential campaign, the former US president promoted the activities of a opaque non-profit organisation with ambitions to fund right-wing media heavyweights and a history of spreading disinformation.
Among the images Trump posted to his platform, Truth Social, are several digitally altered images of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, the work of the John Milton Freedom Foundation. Founded last year, the Texas-based nonprofit positions itself as a defender of press freedom, with the goals of “empowering independent journalists” and “strengthening the foundations of our democracy.”
The group’s day-to-day activities appear to revolve around sharing engagement bait on X and raising millions of dollars from donors for a “fellowship program” chaired by a high school sophomore that will award $100,000 to Twitter personalities such as Glenn Greenwald, Andy Ngo, and Lara Logan. A review of the group’s tax records, investor documents, and social media posts revealed that the John Milton Freedom Foundation did not respond to requests for comment on a series of questions about the foundation’s activities and fellowship program.
After months of retweeting conservative media influencers and repeating Elon Musk’s claims that free speech is under attack from the left, one of the group’s messages ended up in the hands of President Trump and subsequently millions of his supporters.
Disinformation researchers have long warned that generative AI could lower the bar for creating misleading content and threaten election information. Since Musk’s xAI released its largely unregulated Grok image generator last week, there has been a surge in AI content, including depictions of Trump, Kamala Harris and other politicians. The Milton Freedom Foundation is one of many small groups flooding social media with so-called AI bastards.
Niche nonprofit’s AI junk reaches President Trump
Amid a proliferation of AI imagery on X, the conservative account @amuse posted an AI-generated image of a Swift fan to its more than 300,000 followers. The text of the post, labeled “Satire,” was watermarked with the text “Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation.” Trump posted a screenshot of the @amuse tweet to Truth Social.
The @amuse account itself has a significant reach, with X having around 390,000 followers and dozens of posts every day. @amuse appears to be run by Alexander Muse, who is listed as a consultant in the Milton Foundation’s investor prospectus and also writes right-wing commentary Substack, including 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 Muse publishes on his LinkedIn page, and its username is also “amuse,” reflecting his initials and last name. Muse’s book on how to raise capital for startups, which includes an example of asking ChatGPT to pose as Musk and offer business advice, also lists the same Substack account as its publisher.
High-profile accounts, including Musk, have shared and replied to @amuse’s posts. Recent posts include an AI depiction of Trump fighting Darth Vader and sexualized images of Harris. The banner image is currently an AI-generated photo of Trump surrounded by women wearing “Swifties” shirts. The account has posted misleading pro-Trump headlines, including one claiming that Harris, as a “border patrol officer,” has handed hundreds of thousands of children over to human traffickers. As with the AI-generated pro-Trump Swifties images, the headline is watermarked with “Sponsored by: John Milton Freedom Foundation.”
The John Milton Freedom Foundation, named after the 17th-century English poet and essayist, has a small online presence, consisting of a website, an investor prospectus, and X accounts with fewer than 500 followers. The team behind the foundation is made up of five people based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with various experiences in Republican politics, according to foundation documents. Muse’s daughter, described on the nonprofit’s site as a 10th-grade honor student, serves as the Milton Foundation’s “fellowship chair.”
The foundation’s goal is to raise $2 million from big donors to award $100,000 grants to a list of right-wing media influencers called “fellows.” The fellows include former CBS journalist and far-right star Lara Logan, who was fired by Newsmax in recent years for a QAnon-inspired rant that claimed world leaders drink children’s blood, and the author of an anti-transgender children’s book. The foundation believes the money will enable these established influencers to “scale their influence more than tenfold in less than a year,” according to the foundation’s investor prospectus.
Only one of the fellows listed on the foundation’s site mentions the organization in their X profile, and none of them follow the account, but the @amuse account has a prominent link to the group’s community page and the foundation frequently responds to its posts.
It’s not clear whether the foundation has the funds to donate, or whether all of the media influencers on the list of candidates for the 2024 fellowship know about the group. One Texas-based account that posts anti-vaccination content lists itself as a “JMFF” fellow in its profile, but none of the others advertise their affiliation to the group. The Freedom Foundation’s most recent tax records show it is classified as a nonprofit with gross receipts — or total funding received from all sources — of $0 to $50,000, far below the millions it is seeking.
The organization’s officers include Chairman Brad Merritt, hailed as a veteran Republican organizer who claims to have raised $300 million for various nonprofits, board members Shiley Sanchez, who served as vice director of the Texas Republican Party from 1985 to 1986, and Mark Caraffa, a retired health care executive.
Muse’s experience in digital media appears to be much more extensive than the nonprofit’s other members. In addition to blogging, he claims to have worked with James O’Keefe, the former CEO of the right-wing group Project Veritas, who was known for his hidden camera sting operations before being ousted last year for allegedly misappropriating funds. Muse, who is described in the prospectus as a “serial entrepreneur,” has also blogged about how to make money with generative AI.
