Jonah Goldberg Demolishes Dinesh D’Souza For Claiming His 2000 Mules Joke-U-Mentary Was Not Just Retracted

Zachary LeemanJun 7th, 2024, 2:06 pm
 
Dinesh D'Souza Blasts Tucker Carlson Over 2000 Mules Documentary

Screenshot via YouTube

Dispatch editor in chief Jonah Goldberg and election-denying filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza got into a heated back and forth after the latter tried defending Donald Trump by referring to the U.S. Founding Fathers as “convicted felons.”

Goldberg also knocked D’Souza for continuing to claim his film 2000 Mules is factual after the company that distributed it, Salem, recently said it would cease distributing it and apologized for the work. The move came after a lawsuit from someone who appeared in the film.

“This 1776 document was produced entirely by CONVICTED FELONS. All these men were criminals who faced the death penalty from a regime that insisted no one was above the law. Trump is in such good company!” D’Souza tweeted this week along with an image of the Constitution.

The post followed Trump being convicted on more than 30 felony counts in his Manhattan hush money trial.

X, formerly Twitter, added context to D’Souza’s tweet, explaining that the Constitution was “produced during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia from May 25-September 17, 1787 and the final draft of the Constitution was signed by the delegates on September 17, 1787.”

Goldberg also added a fact check and argued the crimes of the Founding Fathers were not similar to the former president being convicted of falsifying business records to conceal an affair with an adult film actress. Trump continues to deny the affair and any knowledge of hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

“This wasn’t written in 1776. They did break the law — revolutionaries, smugglers, tax evaders, and all that — but they had not been tried in court, never mind convicted. And they weren’t schtupping porn stars. The founders weren’t heroes because they were “felons” they were heroes because they were the founders,” Goldberg wrote.

He followed up with a knock against 2000 Mules.

“Calling Trump a felon doesn’t make him like the founders any more than calling 2,000 Mules a ‘documentary’ makes it truthful,” he wrote.

D’Souza stuck by his point, citing Thomas Jefferson having “sex with his slave girl.”

“Revolutions are by definition illegal and criminal. Jefferson had sex with his slave girl, far worse than consensual sex with a porn star. Does this mean the founders wouldn’t meet your high standards and you’d have to oppose them ‘on principle?'” he wrote.

In a later post, D’Souza also defended his film, which argues in favor of Trump’s claims of ballot stuffing in the 2020 presidential election, which claimed to use geo-tracking data to show masses of people around various polling stations. The Washington Post and others ran pieces debunking the claims made in the film, but Trump embraced them, even screening the film at Mar-a-Lago at one point.

“Some media outlets are falsely claiming that Salem and even I have repudiated 2000 Mules as debunked and untrue. Ridiculous! The movie has never been debunked or refuted, and nothing in Salem’s statement, issued under legal duress, suggests or even implies otherwise,” the filmmaker wrote.

In their statement, Salem said they “relied” on “representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc.”

“In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc. (‘TTV’) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots,” the company said. “We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules.”

The company said they will no long distribute the movie or its accompanying book. Salem settled the lawsuit from Andrews, filed in 2022, for a “significant amount,” according to court documents.

“It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.”

Tags:
Zachary Leeman

Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.