Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Grizzly True Crime: DNA Samples Being Collected from Nancy's Hired Help?

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2000 Mules (2022)

 


2000 Mules is a 2022 American film which states that paid "mules" illegally collected and deposited ballots into drop boxes in swing states during the 2020 presidential election. The film was written, directed, produced, and narrated by right-wing political commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, who has a history of creating and spreading false conspiracy theories.[11]

The Associated Press (AP) reported that the film relies on "faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data" provided by conservative[12] non-profit True the Vote.[8] FactCheck.org found the film's "supposed evidence is speculative".[13] National Public Radio (NPR) reported True the Vote "made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work".[14] AP reported that the assertion that True the Vote identified 1,155 paid mules in Philadelphia alone was false. The film presented a single unverified anonymous witness who said she saw people picking up what she "assumed" were payments for ballot collection in Arizona; no evidence of such payments was presented in any of the other four states.[8] The film characterizes the alleged operation as "ballot trafficking" with "stash houses", but presents no evidence that ballots were illegally collected to be deposited in drop boxes.[8][15][16][17]

A companion book was set to be released in early September 2022 but was abruptly recalled amidst legal threats and edited for release late in October.[5] In 2024, Salem Media Group partially settled a lawsuit by a Georgia man who had been falsely accused of depositing fraudulent ballots in a ballot box. As part of the settlement, Salem disavowed the film and the book, pulled them from distribution and apologized.[18]

Content and methodology

2000 Mules opens with a misleadingly edited clip from October 2020 of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden responding to a podcaster's question about boosting his election turnout. After replying, "Republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder for people to vote, especially people of color to vote", Biden added, "we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." His second statement was taken out of context in clips and memes that went viral on conservative media at the time, purporting to be an admission that Democrats were preparing to commit election fraud. This was debunked at the time, as Biden was actually referring to safeguarding the vote, later adding, "What [Trump] is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won't be counted, it can't be counted, we're going to challenge it and all these things."[19]

The film relies on data provided by True the Vote. According to NPR, "A conservative 'election integrity' group called True The Vote has made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work, NPR has found, including the suggestion that they helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Atlanta. The claims appear in a new pro-Trump film called 2,000 Mules." NPR said that True the Vote's claim that it "solved a murder of a young little girl in Atlanta" was false.[14]

Analysis conducted by the AP found the film was "based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data".[8][10] AP explained that in various swing counties across the five states, True the Vote used phone pings to cellphone towers to identify people who had passed near ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofit organizations multiple times per day, concluding that such people were paid mules for ballot collection and deposits. Experts said such mobile phone tracking was not accurate enough to distinguish alleged mules from many other people who might walk or drive by a ballot box or nonprofit during the course of a day, such as delivery drivers, postal workers and cab drivers. True the Vote asserted it had conducted "pattern of life" filtering of such people before election season; the AP noted limitations of that approach.[8]

The film also asserts that some of the geolocated alleged mules were present at what it called "antifa riots" in Atlanta during the George Floyd protests in spring 2020. AP explained that the geolocation data could not reliably determine why people were present at that event; they could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area. The geolocation data True the Vote had purchased began on October 1, 2020.[20] D'Souza and Gregg Phillips, a True the Vote board member, asserted they had matched their geolocation data with data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). In the film, Phillips claims that "dozens and dozens and dozens of our mules show up on the ACLED databases" as what are characterized as "antifa rioters". ACLED said the claims were categorically false, noting it does not track cellphone data. True the Vote's leader Catherine Engelbrecht asserted Phillips was actually referring to a different organization, then mentioned ACLED, but she declined to name the different organization, saying Phillips relied on "multiple databases".[14]

To illustrate the use of phone geolocation technology, in the film D'Souza speaks with Phillips, who alleges he used it to identify two suspects in an Atlanta homicide cold case, providing his analysis to the FBI, which he and D'Souza suggest resulted in arrests of the suspects. The homicide was not a cold case, and both suspects were arrested by state rather than federal officials, with no indication phone geolocation played a role. True the Vote stated days after 2000 Mules was released that it had notified the FBI of its analysis more than two months after the suspects had been indicted. Promoting the film on his podcast, D'Souza said the FBI had forwarded the information to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the arrests resulted shortly thereafter; the GBI denied receiving such information. NPR was unable to confirm that True the Vote had provided analysis to the FBI; Engelbrecht told NPR she would not provide names of any FBI agents she claimed to have contacted "as I do not want them harassed". Phillips had previously claimed without evidence that non-citizens illegally cast as many as five million ballots in the 2016 elections.[14]

The film likened its geolocation methodology to that used by federal investigators to identify individuals inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 attack, showing an image of individuals at the centers of large circles of uncertainty, fully within the building, to show they were there. But similar large circles of uncertainly would be insufficient to show someone was at, rather than near, a ballot drop box.[16]

In the film, Phillips shows a diagram on a tablet computer purporting to show a mule traveling to 28 drop boxes in Atlanta. When that diagram is superimposed over a diagram of actual drop box locations, only some of the purported locations are near actual drop boxes. Phillips told The Washington Post that "the movie graphics are not literal interpretations of our data". Another diagram in the film purports to show geolocations superimposed over a map of Atlanta, but the map is actually of Moscow.[21]

The film shows surveillance video of people allegedly depositing multiple ballots into drop boxes, although there was no way to match them with the geolocation data, and most states allow such ballot collection on behalf of family members and household members. In one segment, Phillips narrates that a woman deposited "a small stack" of ballots into a drop box, although it is not actually clear there was more than one ballot. The deposit allegedly occurred at 1am, after which the woman removed latex gloves and threw them away, which the film characterizes as suspicious. The incident occurred on January 5, 2021, during Georgia's runoff election, not during the 2020 presidential election. The film alleges that some of those captured in surveillance videos were wearing gloves to avoid leaving their fingerprints on ballots, but the videos are from the fall and winter of 2020, when people were taking precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic.[10][8]

Phillips narrates a surveillance video in which a man on a bicycle rides up to a drop box and deposits his ballot. Phillips characterizes the man as "sort of frustrated as he starts to leave", although there is no obvious evidence of frustration, supposedly because the man had forgotten to photograph himself depositing the ballot. Phillips speculated, "they had started requiring the mules, apparently, to take pictures of the stuffing of the ballots. It appears that that's how they get paid." The man later took a photo of his bicycle next to the drop box, leading Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote to ask, "If you're just casting your own ballot, what reason in the world would you have to come back and take a picture of the box?". Elections officials had encouraged voters to share their experiences on social media to boost turnout; images posted on social media included people depositing ballots at that particular drop box.[16]

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office investigated a surveillance video from the film showing a man depositing five ballots into a drop box, finding he had lawfully deposited ballots for himself and his family.[22] It was one of at least three surveillance videos from the film found by Georgia investigators to show lawful depositing of multiple ballots.[13]

2000 Mules does not inform viewers that, even if the events it depicts occurred, every absentee ballot deposited in a drop box must be inside an envelope sent to each registered voter that includes the voter's registration information, signature, and a barcode for verification. Ballots lacking the envelope are rejected. True the Vote did not assert any of the ballots involved in the alleged mule scheme were illegal, although in the film D'Souza falsely asserts the Georgia man depositing multiple ballots for himself and his family was committing a "crime" with "fraudulent" ballots. In an interview with Philip Bump of The Washington Post, D'Souza asserted that, despite not having shown there was any illegal ballot trafficking operation, any ballot delivered by such a process would therefore be invalid. The Republican chairman of the Georgia election board explained that a valid ballot remains so regardless of how it was received.[22][9][13]

AP reported that the film's assertion that True the Vote identified 1,155 paid mules in Philadelphia alone was false. The film presents a single anonymous witness who says she saw people picking up what she "assumed" were payments for ballot collection in Arizona; no evidence of payments was presented in any of the other four states.[8] Engelbrecht states in the film that according to unidentified "people who have shared information with us, it’s generally $10 a ballot" for what is characterized as "ballot trafficking" through "stash houses", but the film presents no evidence that ballots were collected from a nonprofit to be deposited in drop boxes. The film speculates that nonprofits acquired ballots from voters who had moved or died, by stealing them from mailboxes, or by coercion of incapacitated elderly people.[16][17][13] None of the surveillance videos in the film show anyone dropping off ballots more than once.[23] True the Vote claims about video of multiple drops by an individual, "Some of that footage was shown in the first trailer. It was taken out because the video is extremely poor quality."[24]

D'Souza asserted as many as 400,000 ballots may have been involved, "more than enough to tip the balance in the 2020 presidential election", although True the Vote did not allege any of the ballots were illegal.[9]

The film shows a supercut of news clips after election day saying the results had changed from the night before. D'Souza describes what he and others consider suspicious the fact that Trump was leading in some key states early on election night, only for Biden to win the states by the next morning. This is attributable to a phenomenon known as blue shift, or red mirage: Republicans have a greater tendency to vote in person and their ballots are counted early, while Democrats have a greater tendency to vote by absentee ballots, which are counted later. This disparity was more pronounced in the 2020 election because Trump had spent months discouraging his supporters from voting by absentee ballot, which in some cases resulted in expected large jumps in Biden votes as absentee ballots were counted overnight.[19][25][26]

The last third of the film consists of a panel discussion among several conservative and right-wing pundits, all of whom have shows with conservative outlet Salem Media Group, which was an executive producer of the film.[16]

Phillips said in an interview with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, one of the panelists in the film, that it took "12 people 16 hours a day for 15 months" to conduct their data analysis. Phillips said part of the analysis was conducted at the High Performance Computing Collaboratory at Mississippi State University. A university spokesman said he was not aware of any such analysis conducted there, noting Phillips had taken a publicly available tour and leased office space in a separate building in the same research park that "appeared to us to be sporadically used, if at all".[14]

The film conflates with its premise a case involving unlawful ballot collection by two Yuma County, Arizona, women during the August 2020 primary elections; the women had collected ballots for others, although they were not family members or caregivers as required by law, and their prosecutions were underway before the film's release. D'Souza said during a podcast that the Yuma County sheriff saw the film, "went berserk and has opened up an investigation" and, "I believe there will be arrests very soon." The sheriff denied the claim, saying he had been investigating a variety of alleged voter misconduct issues for over a year, none of which were related to the film's claims.[27] D'Souza later claimed that these two women pleaded guilty after having watched 2000 Mules. In fact, this was impossible,[28] as Alma Juarez pleaded guilty on January 18, 2022,[29] and Guillerma Fuentes pleaded guilty on April 11, 2022,[30] before the film's first screenings in May.

Trump ally Patrick Byrne, who financially backed the Maricopa County, Arizona ballot audit that attempted but failed to find 2020 voting fraud in the county, also falsely said the Yuma investigation was in direct response to the film.[31][32]

True the Vote did not cooperate with investigations by Georgia election officials, refusing to disclose the names of people who allegedly collected ballots. The State Election Board issued subpoenas to the organization in April 2022, seeking documents, recordings and names of individuals involved; the Board sued the organization in July 2023 for failure to comply with the subpoenas.[22][33] The GBI examined the True the Vote allegations in fall 2021 but did not find sufficient evidence to open an investigation. In a letter to True the Vote, the bureau noted that the data it was provided counted a "visit" to a drop box as extending to a radius of 100 feet (30 m). The GBI letter also mentioned that it was given cell site location information (CSLI), which is far less accurate than GPS data; GPS was not mentioned in the letter. D'Souza told the Post that True the Vote "did not exclusively use CSLI data" and that they told him the GBI had misrepresented the data.[34][21][35] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in February 2024 that True the Vote said in a filing with the Fulton County Superior Court in response to the Election Board lawsuit that, "it doesn’t have documents about illegal ballot collection, the name of its purported informant or confidentiality agreements it previously said existed."[36][37]

In October 2022, the office of Republican Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich referred True the Vote to the FBI and IRS for possible investigation, finding that Engelbrecht and Phillips had falsely told the office they had given their data to the Phoenix FBI office and were working as informants there, while telling the FBI office, the Arizona Senate and the public they had given their data to the attorney general's office, although they had not. Brnovich's office said True the Vote claimed to have evidence of 243 mules in Arizona, but presented no proof. The attorney general's office also suggested True the Vote's tax exempt nonprofit status should be examined.[38]

Reception

In the first day of its release, the film earned $300,000, making it the second-highest grossing documentary to date in 2022.[39] According to executive producer Salem Media, it grossed $10 million in revenue in the first two weeks of independent and streaming release, with over one million viewers. Salem said its net revenue makes it the most profitable political documentary in a decade.[40] It earned $163,331 in its second weekend,[41] and $50,696 in its third.[42]

Former president Donald Trump, who has routinely and falsely claimed that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, praised the film as the "greatest [and] most impactful documentary of our time"[43] and as supposedly exposing "great election fraud",[8] and arranged for a screening to be held at his Mar-a-Lago resort on May 4; the screening was attended by various people affiliated with the American right, some of whom (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others) have also promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.[44] In his twelve-page rebuttal to testimony and evidence that was presented in public hearings by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump cited the movie in one of its sections that focused on "ballot trafficking" claims.[45]

Media outlets such as PolitiFact, the Associated Press and The Washington Post criticized the film for its factual errors and omissions, making implausible claims, and promoting conspiracy theories about the supposed theft of the 2020 presidential election. The Post characterized the film as presenting "the least convincing election-fraud theory yet".[9][8][10][16][22][46]

Writing in The Bulwark, Republican author and political advisor Amanda Carpenter characterized 2000 Mules as "a hilarious mockumentary" that "doesn't survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims". Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire said, "I think the conclusion of the film is not justified by the premises of the film itself. There are a bunch of dots that need to be connected. Maybe they will be connected, but they haven't been connected in the film."[47] The Dispatch, a conservative publication,[48] wrote that "The film's ballot harvesting theory is full of holes" and that, "D'Souza has a history of promoting false and misleading claims."[49] Philip Bump summarized a discussion with D'Souza as, "D'Souza admits his movie does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted."[50]

Further response

On May 9, 2022, D'Souza criticized Fox News and Newsmax for not promoting the film, claiming that Fox News' Tucker Carlson instructed Engelbrecht not to mention it during his interview with her and that Newsmax had originally booked an interview with D'Souza but then canceled.[46] Trump later made similar criticisms, claiming that "Fox News is no longer Fox News" due to not showing or discussing the film, and that the outlet's silence was pleasing to what he called "Radical Left Democrats".[43]

On May 19, The Daily Beast reported that D'Souza continued to be frustrated that his film was not receiving much attention outside of an "election-denier movement" that already believed in Trump's false claims of a stolen election, with the movement's adherents demanding that conservative media outlets talk more about the film. Conservative talk radio host Jesse Kelly, responding to ever-increasing requests that he discuss the film on his radio show, dismissed those making such requests as "talk about 2000 Mules guys" and "the bottom of the barrel". 2000 Mules was initially available online for $29.99 until D'Souza lowered the price to $19.99 within days of its release. He alleged the film was being widely pirated and that someone who attended the Mar-a-Lago screening had recorded it. Kari Lake, a Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who embraced the film, said she was "flabbergasted" that she had not been asked about it during an interview with a conservative network; Lake did not specify the network.[51]

Eight Arizona Republican officials held a meeting with about 200 others to hear a presentation from Phillips and Engelbrecht weeks after the film's release. Phillips called the press "journalistic terrorists" for demonstrating the film's lack of proof. Asked if he had turned over evidence to law enforcement, Phillips said he had given data to the Arizona attorney general's office a year earlier; the office said they never received it. He declined to discuss specifics of the film's methodology, saying it was proprietary. Engelbrecht declined to name any of the nonprofits allegedly involved, asserting that doing so would interfere with law enforcement.[31][32]

The editorial board of the New York Post, a conservative tabloid that endorsed Trump in 2020, published an editorial on June 10, 2022, stating Trump, "clings to more fantastical theories, such as Dinesh D'Souza's debunked '2,000 Mules', even as recounts in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin confirm Trump lost."[52]

Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general during the 2020 election, announced on December 1, 2020, that the Justice Department and FBI had investigated allegations of election fraud but found nothing significant.[53] In June 2022 testimony to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Barr laughed at the mention of 2000 Mules, and when asked to assess it, dismissed its assertions there had been widespread election fraud,[54] calling the movie "indefensible".[55]

Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Justice Department official who was the central figure in a Trump scheme to install Clark as acting attorney general to announce falsely that the department had found election fraud, promoted 2000 Mules while taunting law professor Steve Vladeck and Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias on Twitter. He asked Elias, who had thwarted every lawsuit Trump's legal team had pursued after the election, "Were you part of the massive multi-State operation #TrueTheVote uncovered?"[56][57]

Three screenings were held during the Republican Party of Texas' June 2022 convention, which saw attendees approve a resolution falsely describing Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election as illegitimate.[58][59][60]

The AP sent a survey about drop boxes to the top elections offices in each state in May 2022. Forty-five states responded, reporting no instances of the boxes being connected to voter fraud or stolen ballots, and only a handful of cases in which boxes were damaged. D'Souza responded, "This AP article contends that mail-in drop boxes are fine because: 1. Election officials say so. 2. There have been hardly any cases of dropboxes being vandalized or damaged. Everyone that has seen #2000Mules will recognize how pathetic and silly this is!".[35][61]

Accused mule's suit and responses

In October 2022, Atlanta citizen Mark Andrews sued Dinesh D'Souza, True the Vote, Gregg Phillips, Catherine Engelbrecht and Salem Media Group for defamation, conspiracy, and intrusion on seclusion.[62] The film accused him of being a "mule" who illegally harvested ballots as part of a fraud ring. Although the film had blurred his face, the film's trailer and promotional stills used his image.[63] A state investigation found that Andrews was legally dropping off ballots for himself, his wife, and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address.[64] The state exonerated Andrews a few days before the movie's premiere.[65]

On May 31, 2024, Salem Media Group, which helped produce and distribute the D'Souza film and book, released a public apology to Andrews, saying it had relied on representations from D'Souza and True the Vote. Salem also disavowed the book and the film and withdrew them from distribution. In a lawsuit Salem filed against its insurer for not covering costs related to Andrews's lawsuit, Salem revealed it had settled Andrews's suit for a "significant" amount. The apology and disavowal came as part of the settlement.[65][18][7] Andrews dismissed his claims against Salem after the apology[66] but the suit, which names multiple defendants, remained ongoing.[7][67]

On December 1, 2024, D'Souza posted a statement which included "We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data [...] Again, I apologize to Mr. Andrews."[68][66]

Cast

Not including people only appearing in archive footage.

Book

A book based on the film was set for release in September 2022. It had been promoted by D'Souza as including new evidence supporting the film's claims, including the names of specific nonprofits supposedly involved in the conspiracies. Shortly before the scheduled release, the book's publisher, Regnery Publishing, abruptly recalled physical copies already sent to stores, and delayed the e-book release, citing an unspecified "publishing error". NPR obtained a copy, reporting that it repeated the same false claims as made in the film, and features new allegations, including naming specific nonprofits D'Souza claims were involved. Several of these groups have threatened legal action in response.[5]

The book was released in October 2022, with references to named nonprofits removed. Language regarding some was softened, and sections linking antifa and Black Lives Matter to election fraud were omitted.[69]

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Infidel (2019)

 


Infidel is a 2020 American political thriller written, directed, and produced by Cyrus Nowrasteh and starring Jim Caviezel, Claudia Karvan, Hal Ozsan, Stelio Savante, Aly Kassem, Bijan Daneshmand, and Isabelle Adriani. The film's executive producer is Dinesh D'Souza, who aided the film with his production company D'Souza Media.[3]

It is the second collaboration between Nowrasteh and Caviezel, following The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008).[4] Both films deal with corruption and human rights abuses by the Iranian regime, and center on foreign journalists (played by Caviezel) whose rights are infringed upon and violated by the Iranian antagonists.[5]

The film was theatrically released in the United States by Cloudburst Entertainment on September 18, 2020.

Plot summary

Doug Rawlins, an outspoken Christian American journalist and blogger,[6] is kidnapped by members of the Iranian regime while he is in Cairo, Egypt making speeches. He is then taken to the Middle East and put on trial for erroneous and phony spying charges.[7] His wife Liz, a State Department official, tries to use her influence to get the American government involved.[8] She wants the US government to get her husband back. However, she soon realizes that the American government will not get involved.[9] Thus she decides to go to the Middle East to rescue him herself.[10]

Cast

Production

Infidel was written, directed, and produced by Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh. It serves as a spiritual successor to his 2009 film The Stoning of Soraya M., which also dealt with abuses and corruption by the Iranian regime and starred Jim Caviezel as a foreign journalist antagonized by the regime. Nowrasteh cited several real world instances of American nationals imprisoned by the Iranian government, including Xiyue Wang and Robert Levinson.[11]

The film was shot on-location in Jordan, where Nowrasteh previously shot Soraya M. On his website, Nowrasteh stated the Jordanian film commission kept its filming secret for fear of objections from the Iranian government, and the film had heavy security. When the Iranian government did become aware of Nowrasteh being in Amman to film, it voiced its displeasure to the Jordanian government.[11]

The story centers on a Christian underground inside Iran, led primarily by women. They work together in the film with Muslims who are also in opposition to the Iranian regime, by helping the main character, Doug Rawlins (portrayed by Jim Caviezel) and his wife, Liz (played by Claudia Karvan). Another actress was set to play Liz but left the film only weeks before filming due to a conflicting commitment. Karvan was recommended by Caviezel who worked with her on Long Weekend (2008).

One of the film's producers was Dinesh D’Souza. He helped distribute the film with his company D'Souza Media. D'Souza had previously produced several political documentaries including 2016: Obama's America, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, Death of a Nation, and Trump Card. Infidel was his first narrative film.

Release

In March 2020, CloudBurst Entertainment acquired the rights to the film, and slated it for a September 11, 2020 release, which was later pushed back a week.[12] Infidel was theatrically released in the United States on September 18, 2020.[13]

Reception

Box office

Infidel grossed $1.4 million from 1,724 theaters (an average of $802 per-venue) in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office; 57% of its audience was male, with 85% being over the age of 25.[14] It fell 45% to $761,136 in its second weekend,[15] then made $460,450 in its third weekend.[16]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 58% based on 12 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10.[17] According to PostTrak, 86% of audience members gave the film a positive score.[14]

Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2.5/4 stars, writing: "Nowrasteh handles the action sequences confidently and there are many legitimately gripping moments. The best moments for me were the small ones, the intimate ones. Caviezel is often a very solemn figure on-screen, and here, Karvan makes him laugh."[18] Writing for Variety, Peter Debruge said: "Although Caviezel's character is meant to stand in for all Americans unjustly imprisoned by Iran, it would be irresponsible to take the film’s 'inspired by true events' claim too seriously. That doesn't mean it's not satisfying to watch Liz and several co-conspirators raid the facility in an attempt to liberate Doug and all those unjustly detained political prisoners. In this fantasy telling, at least, God is on his side."[19]

Accolades

The film won the Faith & Freedom Award for Movies at the 2021 MovieGuide Awards.[20]

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Hillary's America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party (2016)

 


Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is a 2016 political documentary about 2016 American presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a critique of the Democratic Party. The film is written and directed by conservative political commentator Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Schooley.[2] The film had a limited release on July 15, 2016, before a wide release on July 22, 2016, and accompanies a book by D'Souza by the same name.[4][5]

The film was the top-grossing political documentary of 2016, grossing $13 million against a $5 million budget.[6][7] It was heavily panned by critics; review aggregation website Metacritic declared it the worst-received film of 2016. It was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards, and won four, including Worst Picture (a first for a documentary film), as well as Worst Director and Worst Actor for D'Souza.[8][5]

Background

Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative author and commentator who co-directed Hillary's America, is known for also directing 2016: Obama's America (2012), which criticized incumbent president Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election,[9] and America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014) arguing against liberal critiques of its history, including the theft of Native American and Mexican lands, black slavery, contemporary foreign policy, and its capitalist system.[10]

Synopsis

The film begins with scenes of D'Souza at the halfway house where he spent time due to his conviction for making an illegal political contribution. The film then switches to examining and criticizing the history of the Democratic Party, from Andrew Jackson to the present day. D'Souza is portrayed going into a basement archive of the DNC Headquarters where he reveals secrets of the party's history.

The film offers an interpretation of the origins of the Democratic Party in a brief outline, then examines the racism of one of its founders, President Andrew Jackson. It goes on to describe how Jackson and the Democratic Party passed legislation that brutally expelled Native Americans from their land and created the reservation system. This is followed by a political analysis of the historical record of the Democratic Party in the North and South in supporting and defending the institution of slavery and ensuring its spread into the western territories. It examines the founding of the Republican Party which D'Souza personally suggests was a reaction to the support of slavery by the Democratic Party and their endorsement and defense of fugitive slave laws.

The film then argues the Democratic Party opposed the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution. The film argues that the Democratic Party had close ties to the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the accusation that Democratic President Woodrow Wilson supported the KKK and racial segregation, opposed anti-lynching legislation, manipulated New Deal legislation in the 1930s to keep African Americans from benefiting, and opposed civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

The film also examines the validity of the common argument made by leaders of the Democratic Party that the parties "switched positions", with the Democratic Party becoming progressive and Southern racists becoming Republicans, which it rebuts by arguing that fewer than 1 percent of Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights legislation changed parties.

External videos
video icon The Star-Spangled Banner excerpt on YouTube[11]

The film examines the record of the Democratic Party in its use of social welfare programs and machine politics, particularly in urban areas, to create what has been described as a new plantation system, enabling the Democratic Party to exploit and coerce residents. The film then describes the rise and activities of radicals such as Saul Alinsky, who D'Souza believes affected both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton greatly. The film proceeds to examine and criticize the actions of Clinton, questioning her ethics, honesty, and motivations.[12][13] The last 15 minutes of the film[14] comprise the renditions of three songs:[15] God Bless America, sung by Deborah "Debbie" Fancher, D'Souza's then-recently married wife, The Star-Spangled Banner, sung by a young girl and an orchestra in accompaniment, and Stand Up and Say So by the Gatlin Brothers, the former two interspersed with stock footage of Americana and Revolutionary War imagery.[11][16][17][18]

In a post-credits scene, Dinesh D'Souza appears in front of a classroom, where he is "teaching immigrants English as a second language as a form of community service," saying "So how will you know when you have become an American? You'll know, when you become a Republican", followed by an applause by the students in the classroom.[19]

Interviews

D'Souza presents various interviews in the film, including:[20][better source needed]

Release

Hillary's America had a limited release on July 15, 2016, playing in three theaters in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, and making a box office of $77,500 (~$98,989 in 2024).[21] The success of the film during that period was described as "massively frontloaded" because it made about $41,000 on the first day.[21] On July 22, 2016, Hillary's America got a nationwide expansion,[21][22] entering 1,217 theaters.[3] This date fell between the end of the 2016 Republican National Convention and the beginning of the 2016 Democratic National Convention.[9] On its opening weekend, the film's box office was $3.7 million, in the top ten that weekend.[9][23] On July 23, 2016, Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers released the music video "Stand Up and Say So (Hillary's America)", a song they wrote and performed for the film.[24]

Reception

Box office

Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party became the highest grossing documentary of 2016 and the 20th-highest domestically of all-time, grossing $13.1 million (~$16.7 million in 2024) at the box office.[6] In its opening weekend of wide release it grossed $4 million, finishing 9th at the box office.[3]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 4% of 27 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party finds Dinesh D'Souza once again preaching to the right-wing choir -- albeit less effectively than ever."[25] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 2 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[26] The film has the second all-time lowest score in the site's history, after six films (The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Bio-Dome, The Singing Forest, Chaos, United Passions and Death of a Nation (also directed by D'Souza)) tied with a score of 1.[27]

Alan Zilberman's Washington Post review called the film "too incoherent for argument" and boring, its only redeeming moments being unintentional comedy,[12] while Glenn Kenny wrote in The New York Times that it was a masterpiece if the criterion for evaluation were "the extent to which it communicates the personality and character of its director."[28]

In a review for IndieWire, film critic David Ehrlich wrote, "This is the same old dog and pony show upon which D'Souza has built his brand. It's his usual shtick of piggybacking a baseless personal attack onto a pseudo history lesson, a feature-length dog whistle that's blown at a pitch so high that only the most ignorant or paranoid of people are capable of hearing it."[29] Writing in The Guardian, Jordan Hoffman described the film as "paranoid" and "so demented that no synopsis could do it justice" and D'Souza as a "simpleton". He goes on to say that the basis of the film, the "purposely misunderstood fact" that "the Republicans used to be the good guys when it came to the issue of racial equality in America" is as surprising a discovery as the Soviet Union being an ally of the United States in World War II because: "things change, and labels are semantics, and the concepts that bind a political party then might not be the same ones that bind them now."[30] Dann Gire of the Boston Herald called the film "an embarrassment to propaganda films", full of "mind-boggling conspiracy theories" and "fried thoughts and lapses of basic journalistic practices".[31]

Alex Shephard of The New Republic said: "Because he is a very dumb man, D'Souza doesn't even make a credible argument that Bill and Hillary are corrupt, even though in many ways it's low-hanging fruit. Instead, like every fringe weirdo who comes after the Clintons does, he overreaches and invents an absurd conspiracy ... It's not enough for, say, the Clinton Foundation to have taken money from, say, Saudi Arabia—instead, Clinton is literally presented as selling America to foreign countries. Why? D'Souza never explains."[32]

John Fund of National Review stated that "[the film] is over the top in places and definitely selective, but the troubling facts are accurate and extensively documented in the D'Souza book that accompanies the movie [and that] the film is intensely patriotic".[13] The River Cities' Reader's Mike Schulz commented that "while there was the expected applause at the end, it also came right after a particularly adventurous, quite captivating performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and, y'know, congregated crowds are supposed to applaud the National Anthem...It was actually the movie itself that was all but foaming at the mouth."[33]

Accolades

Award Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Golden Raspberry Awards
(37th) 		Worst Picture Gerald R. Molen Won [34][35]
Worst Director Dinesh D'Souza and Bruce Schooley Won
Worst Screenplay Nominated
Worst Actor Dinesh D'Souza (as himself) Won
Worst Actress The "Actress" Who Played Hillary Clinton (Rebekah Turner)[36][37] Won

In response to the Golden Raspberry Awards nominations, D'Souza stated that he was "actually quite honored" and called the nominations "petty revenge" in response to Trump's election and that "the film might have played an important role in the election."[38] After learning his film had won four of its five nominations, D'Souza recorded a short video accepting the awards, where he stated that winning because the voters were upset for Clinton's defeat was positive because "my audience loves the fact that you hate me".[35]

Other

On July 23, 2016, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee (and eventual victor) against Clinton, called on supporters to see the film.[9]


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