Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party tries to tarnish the left’s legacy as a supporter of civil rights.
The film plays like a list of Hillary Clinton’s scandals, from email-gate to Benghazi, claiming that the Democratic Party has a history of supporting slavery and racism.
Though “Hillary’s America” has a 7 percent rate of approval on RottenTomatoes, it might resonate with conservative audiences, opening to a gross of $77,500 in three theaters, and expanding to 1,200 theaters this weekend.
After scoring a big hit with 2016: Obama’s America, D’Souza’s career was derailed in 2014 when he pled guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to a U.S. Senate candidate and was sentenced to eight months in a halfway house.
Donald Trump seen the film?
I’m hoping he will see the film, because it applies to him. The main attack on Trump is that he’s a racist. He hates immigrants. He’s a fascist. Our movie turns the tables on all of that, and we actually show that the Democratic Party has been implicated in slavery, in segregation, in lynching, and in the support of Fascism in the 1930s. We’ve got the goods on Hillary and the Democrats. All of this could be really helpful to Trump. He doesn’t even have to get into it. He can just say, “Hey, go see the movie.”
Trump racist or sexist?
Trump can be loose-lipped and he’s a bit of a wild man. He says things that are sometimes ill-considered and insensitive, but insensitive is not racist.
President Obama’s retaliation?
The FBI claimed that they had uncovered my case as a result of a routine review, but this routine review yielded only a single offender. This notion of straw donations is very common in American politics. This apparent nationwide search only found one Dinesh D’Souza. I had given $20,000 over the campaign finance limit. No American has gone to prison or been locked up for doing what I did absent corruption, and in my case they didn’t even allege corruption. That’s why I think that this was a raw deal. Justice isn’t just a matter of whether or not you did it. It’s also a matter of does the penalty fit the crime and do other guys who did the same thing get roughly the same penalty.
Conviction–politically motivated?
I’m being very careful. I was a little careless with the campaign finance donations. I should have known that there was a big circle on my back. If you tick off the thin-skinned narcissist in the White House you should expect that there’s going to be some retribution. I’m being extra careful, but I’m not being paranoid either. We do live in a free country, you can say whatever you want, and certainly if something were to happen to me, if the creator, producer, and narrator of “Hillary’s America” were to disappear, who would be the main suspect?
Democratic Party’s supporting and Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
If you really think about the Democratic Party’s arguments for Hillary, it would go something like this: “Yes, Hillary Clinton has made mistakes. But nevertheless she is the leader of a good party. A party that has stood up for blacks and for immigrants and outsiders. A party that has helped to secure civil rights and women’s rights.” My point is that this underlying morality tale is in fact false. The Democratic Party has been the party of slavery, segregation, lynching, forced sterilization, and I could go on. People don’t know this. The point isn’t just history for its own sake. It’s to disrupt the illegitimate claim of the Democrats, who claim to have been always fighting for the right side of history.
African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats?
The core ideals of the Republican Party, I think, are very appealing and could easily win a majority of support. The main problem with the Republican Party is Republicans. And by Republicans, I don’t mean the rank-and-file voter. I just mean the people who run the party. The people who run these election campaigns. To me, this is not an election about building a wall. It’s not even an election about tax policy or even ISIS. The core issue is that this country is built on an idea that a guy can start at the bottom and that there are going to be ladders of opportunity that we can climb. And that how far we get up the ladder depends on luck and our own effort. Which is the party that protects the ladder? To me that’s the Republican Party. I think the Republican Party does a horrible job of describing what it actually stands for and a horrible job of communicating its message to Hispanics and to blacks.
Melania Trump plagiarism controversy?
If Melania Trump was putting in for the Pulitzer Prize, this might actually be a matter of some seriousness, but the truth is who the heck cares? We’re basically talking about the Eastern European model wife of Donald Trump. The election is between Trump and Hillary, so to me this is just a complete and ridiculous sideshow.
Supporting Trump?
I’m very much behind him. My position on this whole thing is not, “Never Trump.” It’s “Never Hillary.”
Liking Trump?
I don’t know enough about Trump. I like that he’s unashamed about being successful in business. I like that he’s an undisputed patriot. I like that he calls it like he sees it. I like that when someone throws a punch against him, he doesn’t go into the fetal position. He punches back.
Next projects?
I’m giving some serious thought to putting my toe in the water of feature films. Hollywood’s most powerful messaging is not in documentary films. It’s in romantic comedies and horror films and animated family films. The big man in Hollywood is not Michael Moore. It’s Steven Spielberg.
Bad reviews for “Hillary’s America”
I have combed through the critical reviews looking for a single factual error in the film and I’ve yet to find one. The critics go through the familiar 50-word vocabulary: paranoid, delusional, agitprop, blah, blah, blah. They just recycle those phrases ad nauseum as though they actually mean something. The truth of it is, I actually don’t care what those guys say. I only care about the audience reaction, which you’ll notice is a lot more favorable.
