LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of eager fans and conservative celebrities packed the premiere of Dinesh D’Souza’s latest film, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood Monday night.
Before the screening, D’Souza explained that his latest film is tonally different than his previous documentaries, 2016: Obama’s America and America: Imagine the World Without Her, adding that if he had to pick a genre for Hillary’s America, it would be horror.
The 55-year-old filmmaker said that if every American could see this film, it would be “impossible for Hillary Clinton to get elected.”
“We’re opening our film July 22nd, about two weeks from now, right between the two conventions,” D’Souza said. “The idea is that the Democrats, the Hillary Democrats, have their narrative, and we will have our counter-narrative opening in 1,500 theaters across the country.”
The 100-minute film differs from D’Souza’s previous efforts in that it uses narrative elements mixed with interviews to present a complete picture of the history of the Democratic Party, starting with slave-owning President Andrew Jackson and guiding viewers through Margaret Sanger’s founding of Planned Parenthood and up to President Woodrow Wilson, who screened the Ku Klux Klan-glorifying movie The Birth of a Nation at the White House.
The film begins with D’Souza serving time in a correctional facility for violating campaign finance law, a punishment the filmmaker believes was retribution for his previous documentaries critical of the Obama administration.
D’Souza quickly realizes all of the inmates have committed crimes far more heinous than his, but the filmmaker soon wonders whether the “cons” perpetrated by his fellow inmates are similar to those being perpetrated on the American people by the Democratic Party and its standard-bearer, Hillary Clinton.
D’Souza traces the early days of Clinton’s political career, from her meetings with radical community organizer Saul Alinsky to her early relationship with Bill Clinton and on to more recent scandals including her role in the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, her private email server and allegations of corruption at the Clinton Foundation.
Interviewees featured in the film include Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, National Review editor Jonah Goldberg and Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large and Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer.
“At the end of the day, we want this film not only to help mobilize and rally and unify Republicans, but we also want the film to reach middle-of-the-road guys and Independents and the kind of people who will probably decide this election,” D’Souza said after the screening had concluded.
“I’m not really trying to convert the left. I’m content to dismay and flummox them,” he joked. “But ultimately we want to get this film to as many people as possible.”
Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is in theaters nationwide July 22.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum