New D’Souza film 'Vindicating Trump' imagines how operatives could steal an election

In a documentary called Vindicating Trump that opened Friday in about 850 theaters nationwide, conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza hired investigators to imagine ways dishonest political operatives might be able to sway an election.

One of their solutions was simple: run blank ballots through a copy machine, or simply purchase thousands of them online, both of which the investigators claimed to do with ease in the film. 

One investigator is seen phoning a voting registration office and asking whether it’s legal to make duplicates of his mail-in ballot, and the voice on the other line says that it is.

Another investigator is shown purchasing 1 million names of registered voters for $35 so he can easily identify likely non-voters whose names and forged signatures could be used on the duplicated ballots.

In an interview with Just the News,  D’Souza called the segment one of the more shocking elements of his new movie.

“We told our investigators, ‘Don’t just tell us you can make ballots, go make ballots. Prove to us these are ballots that can be cast without being detected.’ And they did,” D’Souza said. “It’s mind-blowing, to be honest.”

It’s familiar ground for D’Souza, who previously made 2,000 Mules, a documentary that explored allegations that Democratic operatives were stuffing ballot boxes during the 2020 election in which then-President Donald Trump lost to then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

D’Souza obtained from state officials video of the alleged ballot-stuffing, but the mainstream media and most government officials dismissed the claims made in the film as unfounded, not significant enough to have mattered or not illegal, given COVID-19 protocols in place at the time that were designed to make voting easier.

Salem Media Group, Inc., the company behind the book and film “2,000 Mules,” in May issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms. It apologized to one voter specifically portrayed as illegally voting whom Georgia officials cleared of wrongdoing.

2,000 Mules was backward-looking, while D’Souza produced Vindicating Trump to be, in part, forward looking.

“The premise is that Democrats are expected to cheat, but they can’t do so in the same way as before because people will be looking for it,” he said. “We have to think like the criminals. We’re not saying it happened, we’re saying it could. My purpose for exposing it is to make it more difficult.”

D’Souza had an additional forward-looking scene in Vindicating Trump whereby actor Nick Searcy plays an “intelligence bad guy” who hatches a plot to assassinate Trump. When the CIA balks, he laments: “Too bad it’s not the 60’s, right?”

D’Souza, who provided a clip of that scene to Just the News, said the scene was filmed prior to the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life, when he was shot in the ear while at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The scenes with Searcy and dozens of other actors are imaginative recreations of what might be going on behind the scenes at media outlets, Democratic headquarters and government agencies, who are portrayed in the movie as colluding with each other to keep Trump from the presidency and elect Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It’s not just interviews and stock footage like the usual documentary, we created an emotional storyline,” D’Souza told Just the News.

Among those interviewed is Trump, and D’Souza said the former president had to delay their meeting at Mar-a-Lago several times, which proved fortuitous, since the two men finally sat down together about 10 days after the first assassination attempt while, without the rescheduling, the interview would have happened prior.

The interview is woven throughout the film, and D’Souza called it “the centerpiece of the movie.”

He added: “I ask Trump somewhat unexpected questions because I want to see the tumblers of his mind work, and give the audience a window into his soul.”

D’Souza also provided Just the News a clip of the Trump interview in which he discusses accusations leveled by his detractors that he represents a danger to democracy.

The film, viewed by Just the News, begins with several celebrities hobnobbing with Trump decades earlier, including Jay Leno, David Letterman and the cast of "Saturday Night Live."

“Politicians and superstars lined up to be photographed with the embodiment of the American Dream. All that changed in 2015 when he crossed the political Rubicon and decided to run for president as a Republican,” D’Souza says in the movie.

In another section of the movie, D’Souza says: “Democrats, including Obama, sought to frame him as a Russian spy, an asset of Putin, a traitor to the United States. Traitors are typically shot or hanged; so this was an attempted political assassination.”

The film also includes a news clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying on CNN, ”I can make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump. 

It also includes a clip of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saying on television: “Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”