Given all the anti-Trump dogma that’s crossed my screen over the past four years, it’s time to give Dinesh D’Souza, this administration’s answer to Leni Riefenstahl, his due. Listen closely: there’s as much Pesci as President in the voice artist hired by D’Souza to ape his adored liberator. (The celebrity documentarian/professional provocateur, convicted of making illegal campaign contributions, received a full presidential pardon.) Like the man who spawned it, D’Souza’s gasconade, a self-proclaimed “exposé of the socialism, corruption, and gangsterization that now define the Democratic Party” is held together by prevarication and swagger. His “art” is shining a flashlight under the bed of socialism, expecting liberals to scramble in fear of being exposed as the cockroaches they are. D’Souza opines that if Obama and Biden truly believed in climate change, neither would have purchased beachfront property. And according to comedian Terrence K. Williams, when it comes to racial politics,”We’ve won!” An easily amused Williams recalls Martin Luther King’s dream of black and white children sharing a playground and eating at the same table. How’s that for a “look how far we’ve come” moment? D’Souza goes on to call Ilhan Omar “ISIS with lipstick,” falsely accuse liberals of using coronavirus to “exploit the politics of fear,” and muses that Scandinavians are to socialism what the Chinese are to infectious disease. Lest we forget: there are also “animated” sequences that make South Park look like Tex Avery, and historical recreations — Abe Lincoln’s whistle stop tour of 1861 — that scream Film Tech 101. Ditto the director’s insistence on inserting himself into as much of the proceedings as possible. When it was over, I wondered aloud, “Maybe Michael Moore is a genius.” (2020) — Scott Marks
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