When Dinesh D'Souza burst into the national political conversation in 1995 with his best-selling book The End of Racism, he was predictably lambasted by the liberal media for his claim that exaggerating the extent of racism in America only serves to hold back progress on racial issues, particularly for black people and other minorities.
As it turns out, and as is usually the case, D'Souza's book was prescient. Just over a decade later, Barack Obama became President of the United States. What should have been definitive proof that America does not have a 'systemic racism' problem instead became the moment when racial divisions exploded again as Obama injected race into every issue he could and exaggerated the claims of 'systemic racism.'
With his just-released seventh film, Vindicating Trump, let's hope that D'Souza is not prescient again. The movie contains a truly scary prediction about what could happen to America, not only if Donald Trump loses the 2024 election, but also if we don't fix what is a systemic problem in this country: the ease and frequency of voter fraud.
Overall, Vindicating Trump — which is the planned cinematic accompaniment to D'Souza's book of the same name — presents an interesting approach to telling the story of Trump in America. A combination of dramatizations and interviews, the movie traces Trump back from his original walk down the now-famous golden escalator in 2015 to the current presidential campaign.
The dramatizations are fairly amusing, though admittedly a touch on the ham-handed side. Actors portraying various corners of the establishment including network news executives, the DNC, the Justice Department, and Democrat 'Get Out The Vote' operations are shown reacting to Trump's initial announcement through to his current run for a second term in the Oval Office. D'Souza even takes some shots in these skits at establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan. Other than the always entertaining and inimitable Nick Searcy — who plays 'Cliff,' an amalgam of senior Justice Department officials (with a strong emphasis on Matthew Colangelo) — you probably won't recognize many of the actors. They all play caricatures, of course, but not all that inaccurate caricatures, just a little on the hyperbolic side.
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In between these sequences, the movie features D'Souza interviewing Trump's daughter-in-law and current co-chair of the RNC Lara, Trump's attorney Alina Habba, and of course, Donald Trump himself. D'Souza also narrates many of these sections of the movie with an interesting parallel between Trump and Abraham Lincoln. That juxtaposition will probably strike some as far too aggrandizing of Trump, but in the context of the movie, the comparison serves to connect the two in their shared virtue of fighting tyranny while being called a tyrant by their opposition. In that limited sense, it is not an inappropriate pairing. D'Souza leans heavily throughout the movie on Lincoln's famous 'Lyceum Address,' which was a warning against tyranny and a call to action to defend the Constitution and the honor of the Founding Fathers.
The first interview segment is closely aligned with D'Souza's book in that it serves to humanize Trump. Through his discussions with Lara Trump and Habba, D'Souza shows a side of Trump that the mainstream media never shows: his dedication to and love for his family and his connection with working-class America, despite his immense wealth. We have all seen that connection in real-time recently with Trump's visit to a McDonald's in Pennsylvania, but the movie shows that this was not just another political stunt. This is who Trump really is and something he has done throughout his professional and political career.
There is another interview segment in the movie that tugs on your emotions in a strong way. The topic is, of course, Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Trump talks in detail about that day, the awe he felt when he saw people not running away in fear or panic, and how the entire incident strengthened his resolve. Whether you are a Trump fan or not, it is difficult to get through that segment without a combination of anguish and pride. Anguish that this could happen, but pride in how Trump and America responded to it, even if the media has not.
Upon these emotional foundations, D'Souza focuses most of the movie on the threat of tyranny and who it is truly coming from. He details the operations — and yes, collusion — between Trump's opponents to destroy him ever since 2015. D'Souza methodically goes through how they first tried to mock and dismiss him, how they created a false 'Russia collusion' hoax, how they rigged an election against him, and finally how they organized lawfare against him to try to stop his run for a second term. And how they all worked together, implicitly or explicitly, throughout it all.
But about two-thirds of the way through Vindicating Trump, the movie makes a sharp turn away from Trump the man and into what D'Souza sees as an imminent threat to America. The dramatizations and interviews stop and D'Souza talks to two election investigators, Ernest White and Rick Weible, who spend about 20 minutes not just talking about but showing D'Souza how easy election fraud is to commit in America. Through their hidden camera videos, they demonstrate how they ordered 10,000 ballot sheets, were able to also download sample ballots and print them onto the sheets, and how easy it is to insert these fraudulent ballots into the vote count in key precincts. They also demonstrate how Democrat operatives are able to not just register voters en masse but fill out the ballots for them. What is scariest about this digression in the movie is that right up until fake ballots are put into drop boxes or smuggled into voting locations, nothing that White or Weible did is illegal in many states. Similarly, they note that it can be impossible to detect this fraud during a recount. Only a full audit might spot the fakes.
While the sudden shift in the movie is somewhat jarring, it is D'Souza's attempt to warn America before the 2024 election that this can and will happen again without supreme vigilance. And it serves his overall theme of tyranny since election fraud is one of the primary tactics that authoritarian regimes use to stay in power.
For this warning alone, Vindicating Trump is a movie conservatives should try to watch ... and watch before Election Day. While not saying it explicitly, D'Souza inserted this segment into the film as a call to action for conservatives to get involved. As poll workers, poll watchers, or any other ways they can to try to mitigate or stop fraud from taking place.
Finally, the movie concludes with a few more brief dramatizations (in which Searcy truly shines, as he does throughout the movie) and interview segments, and D'Souza returns to his Lincoln parallel. He did not include it in the movie, but the point he is trying to communicate most of all is this conclusion Lincoln gave in his Lyceum Address:
They [the Founders] were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.
Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.
Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, 'the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.'
That caption overlaid on the screen would have been a nice closing touch to the movie (particularly the word 'trump,' given D'Souza's primary subject).
Overall, other than the election fraud segment, Vindicating Trump probably will not break much new ground for an engaged conservative voter. But it is still a significant movie for conservatives to see for that election fraud segment alone. It is not perfect in its execution. As previously mentioned, the dramatizations will make you laugh, but they may also make you roll your eyes a time or two. Scenery definitely got chewed up and spit out in those scenes.
But that is a forgivable sin in the context of the interviews that show a side of Trump that the media will hate for you to see, the emotional segment about the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and the warnings D'Souza issues about tyranny: who it is coming from and who stands in its way. D'Souza is a personal friend of Trump, so it is no surprise that he sees his friend as that barrier.
But what he implicitly communicates is that we are that barrier as well.
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