Debunked ‘2,000 Mules’ film is killed, but Trump’s Big Lie lives on

Salem Media Group, which co-produced Dinesh D’Souza’s 2022 film “2,000 Mules,” has issued a formal apology to a man falsely depicted in the film as committing voter fraud. The company has now pulled the film from all platforms.  This follows the withdrawal of conservative publisher Regnery’s book version of the film, which was abruptly pulled from shelves shortly before its official release in September 2022 because of a reported "publishing error." It never reappeared. Two years after “2,000 Mules” was first released and almost immediately debunked, D’Souza’s faux documentary composed of conspiracy theories, bad data, and pure fabrication is finally dead.  Or is it?  Donald Trump’s supporters across the country have latched onto the lies in this film and continue to treat them as gospel. The basis of the movie is that Democrats, or some shadowy Democrat-aligned group, paid thousands of “mules” to illegally collect ballots in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The supposed evidence came from geotracking of cell phone data in the areas surrounding ballot drop boxes. The group behind the film, True the Vote, tried to back up its geotracking results with images from surveillance cameras, but the film only provides a few clips from Georgia. The film debuted in over 270 theaters and generated $10 million, but as The Associated Press reported the film’s conclusions were based on “faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts, and improper analysis of cell phone location data.” The Washington Post called it “the least convincing election fraud theory yet” and summarized the film by saying that “D’Souza is elevating shaky, misrepresented, incomplete claims to bolster his rhetoric.” Politifact reviewed the film’s claims and found that absolutely no evidence for the alleged conspiracy existed outside of the film; that it would have been impossible to conduct such a nationwide campaign without leaving a paper trail; and questioned why if, True the Vote claimed to have found evidence of crimes, none of that evidence had been turned over to prosecutors. The film even claimed that the cell phone data had been used to solve a murder, but when NPR fact checked that, it was immediately obvious that this was a blatant lie. The two people arrested for the crime were taken into custody months before True the Vote acquired their cell phone data. It wasn’t just media organizations who thoroughly debunked the claims in the film within days of its release. Law enforcement officials in Arizona joined in, saying that True the Vote had not provided any video evidence, that its cell phone data was inaccurate, and that it lied to the public about providing evidence to authorities.  As the Office of the Arizona Attorney General stated in October 2022, True the Vote not only told the media that it had given its information to the state, but it also repeated that claim to the Arizona State Senate and to agents at the Phoenix Office of the FBI.  “Not only is this patently false,” wrote the attorney general’s office, “[True the Vote] acknowledged via correspondence and during a meeting with them that they had not given us the information …” Debunking of the film’s claims has continued over the last two years. The Washington Post published a "final repudiation" of the film in February 2024, detailing how the film was a “masterpiece of meeting market demand.”  Trump wanted evidence to bolster his lies about the 2020 election, and D’Souza gave it to him. The fact that the evidence was “all nonsense” barely mattered. And it still doesn’t. Nothing in “2,000 Mules” stands up to a moment of scrutiny, and its basic premise—that cell phone data showing that people repeatedly walked near a ballot box shows that they were illegally gathering votes—is simply ludicrous. But for Republicans, the film was immediately adopted as proof of Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was "stolen." A group of 17 Republican legislators in Michigan called for an investigation based on the already-debunked film and attempted to leverage its claims by making charges against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton held a "special screening" of the film to justify attacks on the voting system. And Congress Republicans continued to cite the film as evidence of voter fraud well after every claim had been disproven. But most notably of all, the film continued to be promoted by Trump, who once called it “the greatest and most impactful documentary of our time.” Trump, who pardoned D’Souza for violating campaign finance laws in 2018, was more than adequately paid back by the impact of the hastily assembled film.  The damage “2,000 Mules” has done to faith in democracy and the fairness of our voting system will live on, even if it’s never screened again. Considering that Trump has continued to promote the film during his 2024 rallies, it wouldn’t be surprising if the film’s withdrawal a