‘Trump Card’ – Yet Another Documentary Shit Sandwich From Dinesh D’Souza

Ah, Dinesh D’Souza, one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures this side of Corey Feldman’s “Ascension Millennium.” There’s just no stopping you, is there? I couldn’t help but be a bit giddy for your 2020 documentary “Trump Card” as I was eager to watch you try to defend former President Donald Trump a second time after you tried, and utterly failed, to do so with “Death of a Nation.” But unlike that aforementioned documentary, this one did not get a theatrical release and instead went straight to streaming. Now, this may have been in large part due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but after a few films which dealt with Trump (including Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9”) failed to catch on at the box office, clearly theatrical exhibitors were uninterested in showing any of the man’s orange face on the silver screen regardless of where they stood on the political spectrum. One thing is for sure though; CinemaScore cannot save you this time around!

Well Dinesh, you waste no time putting your fears on display as you display a famous torture scene from George Orwell’s classic novel “1984” in which Winston Smith is being grilled by a member of the Thought Police for not falling in line with everyone else. In short, you completely fail to understand Orwell’s dystopian and cautionary tale, and of why his novel became so popular again once Trump moved into the White House. Instead, you and your co-directors (wife Debbie D’Souza and Bruce Schooley) direct Stephen Brodie, who plays Winston Smith, to act as if you are telling him, “ACT LIKE YOU ARE IN TREMENDOUS PAIN! SCREAM! OPEN YOUR EYES AS WIDE AS YOU CAN! THAT’S IT!!!”

Oh, and by the way Dinesh, Orwell was a Democratic Socialist. Did you know that?

Anyway, the opening credits of “Trump Card” feature various American monuments and of how, as you see it Dinesh, they would like if the Democratic Party were to move the United States fully into the realm of Socialism. We see the Statue of Liberty getting replaced by a statue of either Karl Marx or Joseph Stalin. Oh no! Mount Rushmore has been recurved to feature Socialist leaders? Stop the presses! Do you really think anyone in America regardless of political affiliation would really allow such changes to ever happen? That would be like belittling the plaque located at the Statue of Liberty which says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Oh, wait a minute, Stephen Miller, a Trump appointee, did just that. As a lover of America, doesn’t this bother you?

It’s really interesting to watch “Trump Card” a full year after President Joe Biden soundly defeated Trump by several million votes (it’s a fact everybody, Trump lost). Just as you continually do with Abraham Lincoln (played here once again by Don Taylor), you hold the Donald up to a ridiculously high standard to where he comes off looking like the superhero who can defeat socialism as if it were America’s kryptonite. Never mind how the former host of “The Apprentice” got a handout from his dad worth millions of dollars which he squandered, that he was caught on video saying how he loved to “grab women by the pussy,” or that he jumped and ran for cover at a rally when it sounded like a gunshot had just gone off. Remember when did a video in which he posed with a bald American Eagle only to get freaked out when it threatened to attack him. Seriously, even the eagle knew Trump was colluding with Russia.

But as much as you try to hold up Trump to such a God-like level which only the most deluded Evangelicals could ever embrace, you still know how to infuriate me in ways few others can. You must have been begging for participants this time around as you talk with businessman Alan Bender and Imam Mohammad Tawhidi in an effort to lay waste to American politician Ilhan Omar. Never mind how Bender is known for espousing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories or that Tawhidi is a cleric with no mosque to speak off. You, Dinesh, let them hammer away at Ilhan by saying she is controlled by Qataris “through her weakness – money and sex” or describing her as being “ISIS with lipstick.” Instead of debating her politics and views as one should with any other politician, you still prefer character assassination. I mean, heaven forbid you take the time to dig beneath the surface on many issues and people you observe here.

Still, you left me howling with laughter when you entered The Body Shop on Sunset Boulevard and went into a room where you interviewed Larry Sinclair. For those who don’t know, Sinclair has claimed on several occasions that he smoked crack with former President Barrack Obama and later performed oral sex on him. This man also has a criminal record over 25 years long involving fraud and deceit, and a forgery charge which earned him a 16-year jail sentence, but yeah Dinesh, I perfectly understand why you did not include this here. For you, the Obama-Sinclair sex scandal is far bigger and more controversial than the one between Trump and Stormy Daniels. Do you remember when Trump paid Stormy for a night of hot sex where it was revealed he had a mushroom dick? Or how about Stormy being threatened to remain silent about this affair? Oh, and Trump did this while his wife Melania was pregnant with their child. Surely you as a Christian look down on him for this, right?

While watching your films is enjoyable for all the wrong reasons, Dinesh, being in the same room with you is not something I am the least bit interested in. Engaging in a conversation with you is pointless as you are almost as narcissistic as Trump. Admitting defeat is not in your nature even as your theories are constantly proven to be utterly bogus, and rather than listening to the truth of things, you would rather put your hands over your ears and keep telling yourself, “The socialists are coming! The socialists are coming! Don’t you see the lanterns lit up at the old church?!”

As I watched “Trump Card,” I was reminded of an exchange between Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline in the classic comedy “A Fish Called Wanda” in which she tried to get through to him:

“Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘every man for himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes. I looked them up.”

With that in mind Dinesh, let me see if I can possibly make some things perfectly clear for you:

  • The Me Too Movement was not about abortion or protecting Roe v Wade. It was a social movement meant to give voice to those who have been sexually assaulted and harassed as they have been forced to be silent in a way no one ever should.
  • Antifa is a political movement and has been for decades. It is not a terrorist organization.
  • The Hunter Biden controversy of him allegedly accepting a payment of $3.5 million from the wife of the Mayor of Moscow remains an unsubstantiated accusation, and no concrete criminal evidence regarding this has ever been found.
  • President Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech was given in 1858, not 1861 as you present it here.  
  • Your conviction on campaign finance laws in no way allowed you to claim yourself to be a political prisoner, especially after you admitted you did wrong.

Dinesh, I have no doubt of the great love you have for America, and this would remain the case even without your nauseating inclusion of several patriotic songs which become increasingly annoying to listen to throughout. But you need to understand and accept that the Republican party under President Lincoln is not the GOP of today. In fact, neither party is what it once was, and in regards to the Republican Party, this is tragic. While you are correct in saying America is more divided than ever before, “Trump Card” does nothing to bring us together in any healthy way. Like before, you are preaching to an audience who foolishly accepts everything you say and do at face value without doing any meaningful research. But will this stop you? Clearly not. It’s sad to see how deluded you are, and there’s no doubt you will continue to keep listening to the voices in your head which continue to spew propaganda no one has any business believing in.

Oh, and by the way Dinesh, socialism has played a big part in America for decades. Public services such as police and fire departments, the United States Postal Service, schools, and libraries are prime examples of this, and none of it has led to communism. Anyway, that’s just something for you to chew on between now and when you unleash your next documentary shit sandwich on us.

ZERO out of * * * *

‘Fahrenheit 11/9’ is Michael Moore’s Angriest and Most Vital Documentary to Date

Fahrenheit 119 teaser poster

It’s bad enough Donald Trump is still living in the White House, so making a movie about the damage he is doing is pointless, right? Well, Michael Moore’s documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9,” you may be surprised to learn, is not just about Trump. In fact, we only see Trump on screen for 20 minutes at the most here. Instead, Moore is far keener to explore the state of America and how it led to the former host of “The Apprentice” to being elected to the highest office in the country. It has been almost two years, but even Moore still asks the question many of us asked on election night, “How the fuck did this happen?” What results is Moore’s angriest documentary yet, and one of the most vital he has ever made.

Like Dinesh D’Souza’s propaganda colostomy bag “Death of a Nation,” Moore takes us back to the months and days leading up to the election as we see George Clooney declaring Donald Trump will never be President, and media pundits laughing at the thought of it ever becoming a reality. Like many, I assumed Hillary had the election in the bag, but Moore knew better than anyone Trump would end up in the White House, and he takes us right back to the night of November 8, 2016 which started out with hope and euphoria, and ended with utter devastation as a certain victory proved to be anything but certain, and the man who captured the Presidency did not look all that excited about his win. Moore is in a perfect position to tell us “I told you so” in this documentary, but I appreciated the fact he did not.

“Fahrenheit 11/9” is of course a play on the title of another Michael Moore documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but it also refers to the date of November 11, 2016 in which the Electoral College, a political body which truly needs to be abolished, certified Trump’s victory after bringing in their ballots to Congress in containers which Moore loving describes as “baby coffins.” The fact Hillary steamrolled Trump in the popular election by almost 3 million votes did not matter as the Electoral College had the final say, and the world just had to live with it.

Moore does spend some time on Trump, reminding us of the unhealthy and troubling attraction he has to his daughter Ivanka, of how he walked in on Miss America contestants while they were naked, and of how he gleefully plays the media for suckers. There’s a montage of a press conference he arrived very late to, and we watch as the media outlets continue their coverage while endlessly waiting for him to appear. As tempting as it is to call Trump stupid, he is very smart in the ways of manipulation, and those at major networks (Les Moonves in particular) revel in the amount of money they are making off of his campaign.

But soon afterwards, Moore switches gears as he knows much of the information he is presenting us is nothing new, and we have certainly become attuned to Trump committing his crimes in plain sight. So instead, Moore focuses on the state of our union leading up to his shocking victory, and he makes us realize how we should have seen this coming as his political campaign was not as unique as we believed.

One of Moore’s big targets is Michigan Governor Rick Snyder whose actions in part led to the poisoning of Flint’s water supply and its residents developing high levels of lead, the kind of mineral which never leaves the body. What I did not realize about Snyder beforehand was how he had no political experience before taking office, and he was best known back then as one of the richest men in America. Moore ponders if Trump looked at what Snyder did, privatizing public services in order to make more money, and used this as one of many excuses to run for President. Looking at Snyder ends up reminding me and others of how Trump was never the first person to get elected despite having no political experience, and we are again made aware of how many Americans continue to vote against their own best interest.

Once again, Moore visits his hometown of Flint, Michigan to observe its still constant decay as it has long since become the town America has forgotten. Residents are eager to move, but no one will buy their homes. Medical professionals and social service workers alert Snyder and his cronies to the water poisoning situation, and they are silenced. Others complain about how high the water bill remains and of having to decide to pay it instead of getting food. Moore’s first documentary, “Roger & Me,” showed Flint at the beginning of its economic devastation, and it is devastating to see the city in an even worse condition now.

But while Moore has the Republicans in his sights, he is not about to leave Democrats off the firing line. Despite supporting the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he doesn’t hesitate to go after them, nor should he. President Obama gets it especially hard as his visit to Flint, Michigan resulting in filling his supporters with hope, and instead leaves them devastated to where they lose faith in the political system. Like Moore, I believe Barack Obama is the greatest American President of my lifetime so far, but the barbs Moore hurls at him here are justified as he attempts to drink a glass of Flint water and instead merely wets his lips with it.

Hillary gets some harsh criticisms thrown her way as well and for good reason. In reviewing her loss, we see the glaring mistakes her campaign made such as not visiting states like Wisconsin, and her ties to Wall Street were impossible to ignore. And yes, there were those damn emails which were brought up constantly. Despite many Americans getting sick of them being brought up, her political opponents never let the subject go.

But perhaps most damming is when Moore reveals how the Democratic National Committee, not Hillary, threw the election to ensure that Bernie Sanders would not get the party’s nomination. In an all-too-brief interview with Moore, Sanders admits the Democrats saw him as big threat to their platform, and had he clinched the nomination, he probably would have won the Presidency. As much as I wanted to believe the DNC would not stoop to such levels, the evidence presented here is impossible to deny. We even see a supporter from a certain state hold up a sign saying how Sanders won all the counties even though its delegates went on to favor Hillary.

But as bleak and angry as “Fahrenheit 11/9” is, there are moments of humor and hope. Moore limits the number of shenanigans this he performs time around, but we do see him trying to maker a citizen’s arrest of Rick Snyder and later spraying his mansion with water from Flint, Michigan. He even pulls an Erin Brockovich on one Snyder’s advisors by inviting him to drink a glass of Flint water, and the man’s reaction is not a big surprise. One of the biggest laughs comes when Moore accuses Gwen Stefani of being the reason why Trump decided to run for President as Trump discovered she was getting paid more for being a judge on “The Voice” than he was for being the host of “The Apprentice.” Granted, this is probably not altogether true, but considering how thin-skinned Trump is, it makes a hilarious amount of sense.

However, Moore makes us see there is still hope for America as we are shown images of its citizens marching against gun violence and in support of underpaid teachers as they are doing what he wants all of us to do, make our voices heard and to do something about our anger. We see people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running for political office out of a need to make things better for Americans and make things like health care available for all. Susan Sarandon remarked recently how the election of Trump has inspired many people of color and different faiths to run for office. I initially rolled my eyes after hearing this, but after watching “Fahrenheit 11/9,” I believe she has a point.

We also see Moore with survivors of the Parkland, Florida shooting including David Hogg whose activism has become an inspiration to many horrified by the number of school shootings in the United States which continue to occur with frightening regularity. As teenagers, we become quick to see through the hypocrisy of adults and are much more tuned in to issues many politicians will not even acknowledge. Hogg has taken things further with his fellow classmates as we watch them have an effect on the realm of politics and encouraging others to help bring about a much-needed weapons ban.

I came out “Fahrenheit 11/9” shaken and saddened as, like Moore, I wonder if the democracy Americans continue to fight for ever really existed in the first place. Many of the assertions he makes may not stand up to scrutiny, and the documentary at times seems a bit unfocused, but his point of view remains as strong as ever. His critics will be quick to call this one liberally biased, but Moore shows no real bias here as he shows we are all complicit in America being where it is today, and that we will be even more complicit if we don’t get out the vote in November. After all these years, Moore is still passionate about fighting for America its citizens deserve, and he is not about leave it behind.

And yes, Moore does take the time to make comparisons between Trump and Adolf Hitler. Just keep this in mind: Like Trump and Snyder, Hitler had no political experience when he took office.

* * * * out of * * * *

Dinesh D’Souza Unveils the First Trailer For His Lincoln/Trump Love Letter, ‘Death of a Nation’

Death of a Nation movie poster

Oh my lord, the poster above just has me howling with laughter. Comparing Abraham Lincoln with Donald Trump to where it combines the faces of both is just asking for endless derision, especially with the Trump Administration continuing to make disastrous policies which would make Lincoln gasp in disbelief.

That’s right folks, political commentator, filmmaker, convicted felon and (sigh) the recently pardoned Dinesh D’Souza has once again teamed up with co-director Bruce Schooley and producer Gerald R. Molen to gives us another cinematic political screed which Alex Jones cannot wait to see, “Death of a Nation.” The title is of course a play on “Birth of a Nation,” the 1915 silent film directed by D.W. Griffith which portrayed the Klu Klux Klan as being heroic and black men as unintelligent. Once again, D’Souza is out to show us the racist beginnings of the Democratic party, and he looks to pay careful attention to American history as he does to the tweets on Twitter which he re-tweets and that contain racist hashtags (which is to say, not carefully enough).

Seeing the trailer open with Abraham Lincoln with his hand moving gracefully through the fields looks like it was stolen from “Gladiator.” From there, we are shown many historical re-enactments featuring moments from the Civil War, a black man being whipped on a white plantation, and moments from Nazi Germany where we are reminded of what a fascist dictator Adolf Hitler was. Having seen “America: Imagine the World Without Her” and “Hillary’s America,” D’Souza’s attempts in giving us compelling historical re-enactments have failed miserablymore often than not as he instead gives us moments both hilarious and boring as they are hobbled by weak acting and poor direction. As for his portrayal of Lincoln, I cannot help but think D’Souza will continue to treat this American president as some sort of superhero instead of as a real person, something I think audiences of all kinds would benefit from seeing just as they did with Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

As for Trump, who issued a full pardon for D’Souza’s 2014 felony conviction, we do not see much of him here. But it is clear he is out to make Trump look like a heroic President who will “save America” from the Democrats just like Lincoln did back in the 19th century. Whether D’Souza will include anything in regards to Trump’s multiple infidelities, business dealings, numerous bankruptcies, that Access Hollywood video or the Mueller investigation remains to be seen. The movie’s subtitle says, “Can we save America a second time?” Well, perhaps D’Souza isn’t very good with math.

For me, D’Souza’s films (I’m not going to bother calling them documentaries anymore) hold the same fascination for me as it does with people who stop to look at car accidents. As much as I want to look away, there is just too much carnage and damage to ignore. This looks to be just another movie preaching to a particular crowd while its filmmakers attempt to make us see history in a way which doesn’t jive with the facts. D’Souza may want to control the narrative, but he has yet to prove he has any right to do so.

Anyway, “Death of a Nation” is set to arrive in theaters on August 3, 2018, just three months before the 2018 midterm elections (how convenient). I shouldn’t watch it, and I resent it being released the day after my birthday, but with D’Souza I just cannot help myself.

Check out the trailer below if you dare.

Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party

Hillary's America poster

This movie has some of the funniest scenes of any I have seen in 2016, but there’s one slight problem; it was not intended to be a comedy. “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party” is the latest political screed from Dinesh D’Souza which has him, along with co-director Bruce Schooley, trying to tie the Democrats’ racist past with Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President. In short, he attempts to show how the principles of the Democratic Party have never changed, and instead succeeds in making an even worse documentary (if you want to call this a documentary) than “America: Imagine the World Without Her.

Now while Hillary’s name and face are featured prominently in this film’s poster, D’Souza doesn’t really bother with her until the last half hour. Instead, he gives us a bunch of re-enactments (and this movie is overflowing with them) which chronicle his criminal conviction, the time he spent in a halfway house, the America of the 1800’s and the 1900’s, and of Hillary while she was in college. Perhaps a better name for this would have been “Dinesh’s America” as we are looking at history through his point of view, and his POV combines a selective sprinkling of facts with an overabundance of deluded paranoia.

D’Souza re-enacts his time in a halfway house as a way to continue his ridiculous claim of being made a political martyr. He also portrays himself as a white collar criminal surrounded by vicious street criminals whose actions make his crime pale in comparison. Was this really the kind of halfway house he was sentenced to? Maybe, but he presents the inmates in such a stereotypical way that it’s hard to take much of what he shows us seriously. Plus, there’s a sequence where he befriends a fellow inmate who tells him about an insurance scam he and his friends pulled off. The re-enactment of this scam is so ridiculously directed and poorly acted that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud to where I thought I might get kicked out of the theater.

We later see D’Souza visiting the Democratic Headquarters, and when no one is looking he sneaks into an off-limits room which contains the Democrats version of Pandora’s Box. This allows him to uncover the party’s racist past which had them defending slavery instead of trying to abolish it. Seeing D’Souza, a Republican, infiltrating this “secret” room in the Democratic Headquarters brings to mind another alternate name for this movie: “50 Shades of Watergate.”

It is no secret that the Democratic Party of the 1800’s was much more KKK friendly and were never quick to pass the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery. This was even shown to be the case in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” where Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner never hid the fact that the Republicans were the real heroes when it came to ending this barbaric practice. This gives “Hillary’s America” some weight as this is a part of history worth paying attention to as the Democratic Party of today is much different than the one of the past. But it doesn’t take long for D’Souza to shoot himself in the foot as he bombards us with historical re-enactments so one-sided to where they quickly become boring and cruelly exploitive.

These historical re-enactments are further complicated by D’Souza treating Democrats like Andrew Jackson as one-dimensional villains in a bad 80’s action movie or a supervillain from a James Bond film, albeit ones completely lacking in charisma. It doesn’t matter which era is being re-enacted, he treats every Democrat as being drunk with power or as a vampire on a day pass. D’Souza even includes an especially ludicrous scene where Woodrow Wilson is watching D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House when a KKK member on a ghost horse comes galloping out of the movie screen. Wilson is made to look like he is transfixed by this sudden emergence, but it’s really just a bizarre fantasy.

In trying to show how the Democratic Party has not changed from its sordid past, D’Souza completely fails to prove this without a shadow of a doubt. He doesn’t so much cherry pick facts as whitewashes and manipulates them to form a thesis which defies all reasonable logic. Anyone with half a brain can see that the Democratic and Republican parties of today are so radically different from what they once were. D’Souza even tries to convince us the big switch between the two parties in terms of their views on civil rights was a flat out lie, and he presents his evidence of this in a way which requires the use of a microscope to fully discover what he is talking about.

When D’Souza finally gets around to dealing with Hillary Clinton, he portrays her as a self-centered and snobby bitch interested in her own ambitions more than anything else. In an article, Alex Shephard described D’Souza’s portrayal of a teenage Hillary as being like Reese Witherspoon’s character of Tracy Flick from “Election” if Tracy “liked to murder small animals,” and that is spot on. D’Souza shows her laughing at one of President Richard Nixon’s speeches on television as if it were a bad thing. But the most jaw-dropping moment comes when D’Souza flat out blames Hillary for her husband Bill’s numerous infidelities. This doesn’t really speak much of Hillary as it does of D’Souza’s criticisms of feminism.

D’Souza presents himself throughout “Hillary’s America” as a truth teller no one should dare question, but he rarely backs up his arguments with much in the way of convincing evidence. In fact, he even dredges up the Benghazi attack which has been beyond thoroughly investigated, Hillary’s emails which just about everyone is sick of hearing about, and he even includes a scene from those completely debunked videos from the Center for Medical Progress. Bringing these subjects up only weakens an already deeply flawed thesis to where it feels like D’Souza is just grasping for anything which might, and I strongly stress the word might, work in his favor. Oh yeah, he also throws in Saul Alinsky for good measure, but Alinsky comes across as a caricature more than anything else.

While there are many unintentionally hilarious scenes to be found here, there are others which are simply infuriating. D’Souza portrays Margaret Sanger, the mother of Planned Parenthood, as an emotionless sociopath. Granted, there is evidence she was a proponent of eugenics, but showing her as wanting to exterminate all black people is a flat out lie. His portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson as openly racist to where he only agrees to civil rights legislation just to quell his political opponents feels deeply insulting. And in portraying America of the past, D’Souza piles on scenes of slaves being whipped and tortured which soon feel cruelly exploitive of a national tragedy.

It’s tempting to call D’Souza stupid after watching “Hillary’s America,” but that may not be altogether fair. As a director, however, he makes one stupid mistake after another as he shamelessly manipulates the audience’s emotions while bashing their heads in with information based more on his distorted worldview than reality. He employs an overly dramatic music score by Stephen Limbaugh which becomes ridiculously bombastic in no time at all. And he concludes the movie with renditions of patriotic songs to show his undying love for America. I do not doubt his fervent patriotism of the United States, but it feels truly annoying that he needs to constantly remind us of this.

It doesn’t bother me that D’Souza has made an anti-Democrat movie as no political party is beyond reproach. What bothers me is how much he believes in what he is telling us as his view of history is more revisionist than it is accurate. Watching him in “Hillary’s America” reminded me of Bill Pullman’s dialogue in “Lost Highway:”

“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.”

In D’Souza’s mind, Republicans have been and still are the heroes of justice and racial equality, but if Lincoln saw the state of the party today, there’s no doubt he would be crying a river over it and not just because Donald Trump (who is barely mentioned in this movie) is their presidential nominee.

Now, this review might be greeted by various internet trolls who claim I am deeply biased or a “libertard” among other things. I’m not going to go into who I am voting for this November here. Instead, I want to leave you with a couple of things to think about. Does it make more sense to base your views on a political party on what it was like when it began or how they treat the American people in the present day? If D’Souza loves being a citizen of America so much, why did he willfully break the law? Did he even realize before committing his crime that it would cost him a right which American citizens should cherish, the right to vote? Say what you will and believe what you want, but nothing will change the fact that “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party” is one of the worst documentaries ever made.

½* out of * * * *

Copyright Ben Kenber 2016.

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