He is credited with developing the technology used to “prove” the mules’ nefarious deeds. The star of the show, along with D’Souza and the hoodied mules, is Gregg Phillips, a Republican who has served as a state official in Mississippi and Texas. But for many conspiracy theorists, the depictions of shadowy, hoodie-wearing figures approaching ballot drop boxes, interspersed with images of dark rooms lit by computer screens displaying incomprehensible maps and diagrams, is proof aplenty. You might think such disproven claims would discredit the filmmakers. The film boasts that the “geolocation” technology not only backs up Trump’s assertions of systematic election theft but had such pinpoint accuracy that it also helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Georgia. Law enforcement officials told NPR that there was no truth to the story the murder had been solved two months before the brains behind 2000 Mules said they turned over their evidence to authorities. A map that purports to depict cellphone usage in Atlanta-one of the main alleged centers of mulish activity-actually shows a slice of Moscow, according to the Washington Post. “If you’re just casting your own ballot,” one of the film’s talking heads asks darkly, “what reason in the world would you have to come back and take a picture of the box?” Millions of Instagram users could provide the answer. Another fellow is deemed suspicious for taking a picture of his bike propped against a drop box after voting. Some of the alleged ballot-harvesters get tagged as though they’ve been spied on by undercover cops-including “dog guy,” who was filmed with his pup. But as NPR notes, the videos never show the same individuals taking votes to multiple drop boxes, or returning to the same boxes to stuff them with additional ballots. The film contains video footage of people putting multiple ballots into drop boxes (which is not, as the film would have it, illegal). “mules”) to stuff drop boxes with phony ballots in battleground states-is just so much hooey. The Associated Press, NPR, the New York Times, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post, among others, have pointed out that the film’s central assertion-that cellphone tracking data reveals multiple trips by Democrat-funded flunkies (a.k.a. This success has come despite the movie’s claims being repeatedly debunked. (Documentaries don’t tend to attract Marvel franchise–size audiences.) Streaming revenues-D’Souza’s website sells the film for $19.99 a pop-totaled $10 million in just the first two weeks of release, according to Salem Media Group, the conservative Christian company that financed the film. It is among the highest-grossing documentaries of the year so far, having earned nearly $1.5 million at the box office since its May release. Trump, who hosted a screening of 2000 Mules at Mar-a-Lago, called it the “greatest and most impactful documentary of our time.”Īs with so many things hyped by the former president, the film became a viral sensation, complete with its own eponymous hashtag. But if you tuned in to the January 6 hearings, you might have caught a reference to the film by former attorney general William Barr, who, doubling as a movie critic, dismissed it as “singularly unimpressive” and “indefensible.”ĭirected by right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, 2000 Mules purports to prove that Democrats engaged in widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election and stole the presidency from Donald Trump-who, coincidentally or not, pardoned D’Souza in 2018 after his felony conviction for making illegal campaign contributions. If your movie preferences lean toward the likes of Top Gun: Maverick, or if your politics fall anywhere to the left of Liz Cheney, you might have missed the theatrical release of a documentary titled 2000 Mules.
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