Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s movie alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election, “2000 Mules,” has made more than $1 million on streaming sites Rumble and its subscription-based platform, Locals in the first weekend out.
The conservative political commentator’s latest film hit the streaming site at noon on Saturday, and after 12 hours it had grossed “more than one million dollars” on Rumble and Locals, making the sales “good enough” to put the film in the “estimated box office top ten for the weekend of May 6th to May 8th,” according to PRNewswire.com. The movie also played on a limited basis in selected theaters on May 2 and May 4, reported Newsweek.
“The success of ‘2000 Mules’ on Rumble is a great sign for creators who do not want to be silenced or censored for their speech,” D’Souza told the outlet.
“Supporting creative independence is core to our values, and we are thrilled to offer creators a new way to distribute and sell movies independently,” Locals President Assaf Lev told the outlet.
D’Souza said the idea for the film came from True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, who he said got a hold of a “treasure trove of cellphone data, this is called cellphone “geotracking,” which they believed proved “election fraud.” The two purport to show 2,000 people who allegedly made dozens of trips each to multiple drop boxes where they deposited mail-in ballots in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.
In the film, Phillips interviews an informant from Yuma County, Arizona, who alleged “mules” were paid based on the quantity of ballots they stuffed in drop boxes.
“I would get a call to find out how many ballots were brought in and if they were already pre-filled out first,” the informant, whose face was obscured and voice altered.
The Associated Press said the film used “flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage” to cast doubt on the 2020 election. It explained why it came to this conclusion:
The film focuses on “ballot harvesting,” which is a term for “dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself.” The AP noted that the practice is “legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on.”
D’Souza’s films have generated controversy in the past. His 2012 documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” was based on his book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” and grossed $33 million.More recently, he released “Trump Card” in 2020, which explored corruption in the Democratic Party.