Dinesh D’Souza, the maker of ‘2000 Mules,’ has admitted that his Big Lie-promoting film was based on faulty information. Will his apology change any minds? It seems doubtful.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
For millions of Republicans who desperately wanted to believe Donald Trump’s Big Lie, Dinesh D’Souza and his book/film 2,000 Mules offered a convenient explanation: Geolocation data supposedly showed that certain individuals had visited different drop box locations, presumably to “stuff” them with the ballots that helped Joe Biden defeat the then-president.
While it sounds fascinating, there is just one teeny-tiny problem: 2000 Mules was complete nonsense.
And, if you don’t want to believe the experts who had been saying so since the film was released, then at least listen to D’Souza himself, who acknowledged its faulty premise on Sunday.
In a statement posted on his website, the right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist noted that his movie was based on data “collected and reviewed” by an organization called “True the Vote,” a self-proclaimed election integrity group of dubious repute.
“An analysis of this data revealed highly suspicious patterns of certain cell phones, which were recorded in the location of ten or more drop boxes. This data was the premise of the film,” explained D’Souza.
“During the production of this film, as a supplement to the geolocation data, True the Vote provided my team with ballot drop box surveillance footage that had been obtained through open records requests,” he added.
Then he explains how the duper supposedly became the dupe.
“We were assured that the surveillance videos had been linked to geolocation cell phone data, such that each video depicted an individual who had made at least 10 visits to drop boxes. Indeed, it is clear from the interviews within the film itself that True the Vote was correlating the videos to geolocation data,” the filmmaker stated. “We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data.”
Shocking!!!
It appears as though D’Souza did not come forward voluntarily but rather because he was sued by one of the falsely accused “mules,” to whom he apologized directly in the statement.
Of course, that’s not how the filmmaker characterizes his statement.
“I make this apology not under the terms of a settlement agreement or other duress, but because it is the right thing to do, given what we have now learned,” D’Souza stated, adding that he would have produced the film differently if he had known that it relied on false information.
How noble!
You may choose to believe that or not, but he simply doesn’t seem like the most credible person.
Either way, it doesn’t make much of a difference, because only a tiny percentage of Trump supporters who believed this nonsense will ever hear of this apology or acknowledge that they were misled.
And herein lies one of the problems with the kind of misinformation and disinformation that people like D’Souza or Elon Musk spread: The initial false claims they make or amplify are seen by millions of people, while the corrections/clarifications/
For example, based on polling and the number of Trump’s voters, about 50 million Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen. It stands to reason that many of them will have reached that evidence-free conclusion after falling for the bill of goods D’Souza sold them.
So, now that the film has been debunked 2.5 years after its release, how many minds will be changed in light of his apology?
It stands to reason that the number will not be much higher than the 2,000 fictitious mules D’Souza claimed to have identified.
