How David Horowitz’s Right-Wing ‘Charity’ Helped Catapult Trump To the White House

David Horowitz speaking in 2011 at CPAC.
David Horowitz’s Freedom Center got special attention over the weekend with a broad Washington Post expose into the work of the conservative non-profit and the key role it played in ushering in the Trump era.
The story of Horowitz’s center, self-described as a “school for political warfare,” is used by the Post to demonstrate “how charities have become essential to modern political campaigns” and to question whether this organization and similar political minded non-profits are stretching their tax-exempt definitions beyond lawmakers’ original intent. Horowitz himself acknowledged that it is time for the IRS to take a look at the type of work his organizations and similar groups are doing and to “redefine what a charity is.”
Horowitz, in the article, is portrayed as a master networker who had been cultivating for decades a new type of conservative leadership. He mentored Stephen Miller, now Trump’s senior policy adviser, and forged close ties with Steve Bannon, the president’s top strategist. In fact, it was at a Horowitz-sponsor resort that Bannon, alongside his sponsors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, adopted the idea of promoting a new leader for the conservative camp, “an outsider to shake things up.”
Horowitz’s work, focusing on an anti-immigration, and his views, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-Muslim, eventually became the platform of a network of organizations, many of them non-profits, that revolutionized the Republican Party and brought Trump to the White House.
At an event after the elections, Horowitz pulled out a paper from his coat pocket, and read out a list of people his Freedom Center has supported and are now in the Trump administration. It included Bannon, Miller, Vice President Pence, Jeff Sessions, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway, among others. “It’s quite an impressive list,” Horowitz said.
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Fast Forward Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Opinion Is JB Pritzker’s very Jewish toughness the key to fighting Trump?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.