Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza on Wednesday addressed the reason he believes Fox News has avoided covering his documentary “2000 Mules.”
In the movie, he and True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips argue an illegal ballot harvesting scheme took place in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin during the 2020 general election.
They offer cellphone tracking data and video surveillance footage of ballot drop box locations obtained through public records requests as proof the illicit conduct took place and could have changed the outcome of the presidential race.
Many legacy media outlets have reported on “2000 Mules” — the most successful political documentary released in a decade — either to fact-check or otherwise discredit it, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Politico and The Associated Press.
All question that cellphone tracking data provides an accurate way to determine whether someone actually went to a drop box and, if so, whether they illegally cast ballots.
True the Vote says it only included those who went to drop boxes 10 or more times and also went to five nonprofits, which allegedly acted as ballot collection points from which the “mules” then delivered batches of them to drop boxes.
To further guard against accidentally picking up people who happened to pass by drop box locations regularly, True the Vote bought cellphone data from September, October and November, showing before, during and after election season.
Despite all the buzz and controversy surrounding “2000 Mules,” D’Souza noted on his podcast on Wednesday that Fox — the largest conservative media outlet — has all but ignored the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=407FSVwREwI
In fact, an online search of “FoxNews.com” and “2000 Mules” on Thursday produced no hits.
“It’s downright strange. It demands explanation,” D’Souza said.
The issue came to the forefront over the weekend when Fox host Sandra Smith said during a fiery exchange with Alabama Rep. and U.S. Senate candidate Mo Brooks that “2000 Mules” had been debunked. She cited the Reuters fact-check.
D’Souza pointed out that Smith had no intention of bringing up “2000 Mules” in her interview with Brooks, but the lawmaker took her there.
“Fox has evidently banned any mention of ‘2000 Mules’ across the entire network,” D’Souza said.
The filmmaker noted that he did one pre-release interview on Fox Business in April, but he believes that interview “slipped through” before the decree came down.
Have you seen “2000 Mules”?
He contended that Fox certainly does not have to agree with “2000 Mules,” but to ignore it is not normal, especially given the network’s conservative audience.
D’Souza suggested Fox executives should have reasoned, “Well, listen. Dinesh is kind of a regular on Fox. We have him on all the time. Let’s bring him on the show and kind of confront him with these fact-checks and go through them one by one and have him address them.”
“This kind of normal analysis is what in a healthy society a journalistic network would do, but that is not Fox — at least that is not Fox today,” D’Souza said.
D’Souza posited three possible reasons for Fox’s conduct.
First, network executives have legal concerns.
Dominion Voting Systems is currently suing Fox Corporation for defamation, saying the network aired false claims that the company’s voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election.
D’Souza dismissed this as a likely cause of Fox’s “2000 Mules” blackout, saying the movie does not deal with voting machines, but rather the legality of ballots cast.
The film also does not name any nonprofits that may have taken part in the alleged scheme, but instead calls on law enforcement to take True the Vote’s data and investigate the matter.
D’Souza then offered fear of offending or losing advertisers as another possible reason Fox is eschewing covering “2000 Mules.”
But he does not believe this is the reason either, noting that the success of the documentary makes it newsworthy and that other outlets have covered it. Of course, the catch-22 for Fox would be that it risks alienating its viewership if it covers the film critically as other outlets have.
D’Souza concluded the likely reason Fox is not covering “2000 Mules” is that Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch no longer supports former President Donald Trump.
“What you have here is a seeming feud, a personal feud. Almost call it a billionaire spat, if you will. One that, by the way, has been reported off-and-on in a couple of places,” D’Souza said.
He noted some outlets have reported that Murdoch has soured on Trump, arguing that the 45th president should move on from the 2020 election.
“Look, it’s Mr. Murdoch’s network. It’s Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper. He can do whatever he wants,” D’Souza said.
“He can burn his brand if he wants to, but I think this is very unhealthy in a democracy that topics that are of urgent public concern, that are on the minds of certainly the GOP side of the electorate and probably much more than that, cannot somehow be discussed because one man declares they can’t.”
The Patriot Project reached out to Fox News for comment on this story but had not received a response at the time of publication.
A version of this article originally appeared on Patriot Project.
