Dinesh D’Souza, everyone’s favorite conservative firebland, is back with the trailer to Hillary’s America, the sort-of sequel to 2016: Obama’s America, the second-highest-grossing political documentary ever. Unbowed by some legal troubles, D’Souza is up to his old tricks again in this new trailer for Hillary’s America: namely, dog-whistle politics (you may remember the Middle Eastern music soundtrack over black people fighting over a Monopoly game during the Obama’s America trailer), filming black people shouting, and depicting himself as a kindly professor who looks like he just smelled a fart.
And that fart? DEMOCRATS. Like some kind of terminally uncharismatic Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code (or is it Nic Cage in National Treasure?), D’Souza claims to have done the research and discovered “the soul of the Democratic Party.”
At that point, the trailer immediately cuts to a slave being whipped, which should give a clue as to his thesis. Subtlety is not one his virtues. The Democratic Party is founded on support for slavery! While Lincoln was a Republican! Which is brilliant, as it’s true enough, it just conveniently ignores the Southern Strategy of playing on racial fears to bring Southern Democrats to the GOP that’s been happening since Nixon. And was employed to great effect again, albeit in code-word form (“welfare queens,” etc.) by D’Souza’s old boss, Ronald Reagan. And now, with Donald Trump dividing the party using “bigger walls” and “no Muslims allowed” rhetoric (using the Southern Strategy as a pure demagogue rather than a mouthpiece for corporate interests, no wonder they hate him!), D’Souza is going to go back in time to show us who the real racists are, today.
Which is especially rich considering the source:
With support from a charismatic professor, Jeffrey Hart, who was a senior editor at William F. Buckley Jr.’s The National Review, the group founded The Dartmouth Review, with the aim of challenging in the most offensive ways possible what they saw as liberal campus claptrap. Under D’Souza’s editorship, the paper published a “lighthearted interview” with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, accompanied by a staged photo of a black man hanging from a tree; an article about affirmative action entitled “Dis Sho’ Ain’t No Jive, Bro,” written in Ebonics; and the names of members of the Gay Student Alliance.
Nice. Nonetheless, D’Souza has extra street cred this time around on account of he just got out of “prison.” Or so the movie would have us believe. The pound-me-in-the-ass federal pen where Dinesh D’Souza spent eight months getting born again hard after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations? A “community confinement center” in National City outside of San Diego, where he wasn’t even required to stay during the day.
The rest of his evening would look something like this: He would check in to the confinement center at 7:57 P.M., three minutes before his 8 P.M. curfew. Certain that the Obama administration is waiting for him to slip up, he wouldn’t risk being late, which is why he eats near the facility and not at his home, 20 miles away in La Jolla, where he is free to spend the day (though he may not leave the confines of San Diego County).
Can you imagine what those Obama zealots might’ve done if Dinesh was late to his evening confinement? My God, they might’ve defoamed his lattes or confiscated his quinoa.
After using one of the stalls of his communal bathroom, he would enter the open-plan sleeping quarters and climb onto a top bunk, above a 400-pound guy who, “when he moves, the whole bunk bed shakes.” He would do his best to focus on his book and to block out the conversation. “I’ll be on my bed. I’ll hear four guys discussing the tits on the woman at Los Tacos. It will go on and on and on. I’m just powerless to move.”
This poor man, having to listen to poor people talk about titties. The horror, the horror…
But, like a mega-church pastor who gets caught paying for illicit handjobs and claims it only proves how well he knows temptation, D’Souza is wearing his past failings as a badge of honor. That jail time (“jail”) was just the result of Obama being out to get him! Because he’s dangerous. Because he’s so woke to the TRUTH! The truth that, as his new prison-bro tells him, “gangs are all about stealing.” (I enjoy the implication that Dinesh D’Souza had to go to prison in order to learn the truth that the goal of criminal gangs is money).
And obviously, the Democrats are a gang. Dinesh D’Souza is a victim of gang violence! And now he’s turning state’s witness to uncover the whole thing.
I like to imagine that “___WORTHY” bulletin behind him is articles printed off Upworthy. Anyway, the crime of the century D’Souza is about to expose in Hillary’s America?
“What if the goal of the Democratic party is to steal the most valuable thing ever produced?”
And that thing? The presidency! That’s right, unless D’Souza stops them, these thieves are going to fleece us through democratic means. It’s diabolical. You can learn all about it when Hillary’s America opens this July.
By the way, I’ve written a lot of posts about this guy, and commenters (usually the right wingers) always want to know “Why are you so obsessed with this guy, bro?” Well, aside from the fact that he’s the right wing’s answer to Michael Moore, and, as previously stated, director of the second-biggest political documentary of all time… Haven’t you ever whacked low-hanging fruit with a baseball bat before? It’s exhilarating.
Vince Mancini is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.