On radio Monday, author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza joined Glenn to discuss a new film he's creating with Gerald Molen - producer of Schindler's List, Jurassic Park and other classics. The new film, called Stealing America, will open during the Democratic Convention in July, 2016.
D'Souza compared the narrative of the film with his previous documentary, 2016: Obama's America, which he released in 2012 as an attempt to blow the whistle on Obama and expose a side of the incumbent president people didn't know.
"We made some predictions about Obama. And here we are, and I think the Obama we described is the Obama he's turned out to be," D'Souza said. "We want to do the same thing with Hillary. But in the new film, I want to go beyond the candidate, and look at the secret history of progressivism and of the Democratic Party."
He went on.
"People think the Civil War was a war simply between the North and the South. And the South was the pro-slavery side. The North was the antislavery side," he said. "But the northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas were defenders of slavery."
Listen to the eye-opening dialogue below.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
GLENN: Dinesh D'souza, you know he is -- is one of my favorite writers. He came out with an incredible documentary right before the election last time that really kind of showed Obama's America and what he was planning on doing. And Gerald Molen is a guy that you know his work. You may not know him. Schindler's List. Minority Report. Jurassic Park. Days of Thunder. Rain Man. As executive producer. They are now working on a new movie called Stealing America. Welcome, guys. How are you?
DINESH: Great to be here, Glenn.
GLENN: Dinesh, this is coming out during the Democratic convention, and it is?
DINESH: Yeah. You know, four years ago, we tried to blow the whistle on Obama and expose a side of him that people didn't know. And part of what I wanted to say about Obama is that he wasn't just a bungler. He wasn't just an amateur, someone who didn't know what was going on. He actually wanted to see a shrinking of American prosperity and power. And so he we made a call on Obama. We made some predictions about Obama. And here we are. And I think the Obama we described as the Obama has turned out to be.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
DINESH: So we want to do the same thing with Hillary. But in the new film, I want to go beyond the candidate, and look at the secret history of progressivism and of the Democratic Party.
GLENN: Love this.
DINESH: Because there's a whole narrative here, the Democratic Party is the party of the little guy. It's the party of progress. It's the party of abolitionism and equal rights and equal opportunity and women.
GLENN: It's the exact opposite.
DINESH: So the truth is completely different. And this truth is buried. It's not just buried in the media, it's buried in academia so that there's a kind of false narrative out there. And that's all young people are exposed to. So we think part of the decision next year is a decision about -- not just about America, but what really does progressivism and the Democratic Party stand for?
GLENN: And it's unbelievable, because we're working on a new book that will come out right before the election called The Progressives. And it is the same thing, that people don't understand what they're dealing with. They have no idea. What is the -- what is the thing that you have put together so far that you say, "People are going to be shocked when they find out?"
DINESH: We're going to -- we're going to tell a new story about the party system in America. We'll tell you a new story about the Civil War. People think the Civil War was a war simply between the North and the South. And the South was the pro-slavery side. The North was the antislavery side. But the northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas were defenders of slavery.
So in other words, right away, you see that this was not so much a North/South divide, it was a divide between the Republican and the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party, both in the north and in the south, staunchly defending and digging in in to protect slavery.
Now, of course, part of the narrative we'll deal with in the film is just the idea that, "Oh, yes, that's how things used to be. But we Democrats got really enlightened, and we got really smart. And now we're the good guys. And all the Dixiecrats and all the old slavery and segregation guys became Republicans." That is part of the official narrative. So this is part of the intellectual content of this movie. So we'll have a movie about a candidate. And we'll lift a lot of veils to show the candidate behind the mask. But we'll also lift the veils on the party itself.
GLENN: Do you guys think that Hillary will be the candidate? Gerald?
GERALD: I think it's questionable right now.
GLENN: I mean, put a movie in production that has Hillary Clinton as the candidate. I'm not sure. She is -- I mean, I hope she is. She's so wildly unlikable, by even her own party.
GERALD: It doesn't necessarily have to be all about her. The point that Dinesh has made about the -- you know, getting the truth about what the Democratic Party is all about. What they've been about. And about how anything that has become good in America, they have basically stolen. Abraham Lincoln was not a Democrat, even though they want to say so.
GLENN: How do you go from Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, all of these things, and then go to documentaries. Why are you doing that, Gerald?
GERALD: Look, I'm not a kid anymore. I've got grandkids and great-grandkids. And I really, really wanted them to have a little piece of America like I had, maybe the same opportunities that I had. And this guy right here has afforded me the opportunity to step back, and I don't worry about the big films anymore. I think the documentaries have a chance on being bigger because they speak -- if nothing but truth, to life. And I'm just concerned about those kids, and that's why I'm here.
GLENN: When you look at Schindler's List, it's happening all over again now with the Christians in the Middle East. And you would think that that's one of your more important films. But Minority Report, I would make a case, I mean, with exception of the pro cogs that are in the milk bath, that was so far ahead of its time. We're now seeing a lot of the stuff that was in Minority Report. Did you -- when you guys were putting that together, did you think, "Oh, this is total science fiction?" Or did you think, "Parts of this are real that are coming?"
GERALD: I looked it as strictly just --
GLENN: Just a movie?
GERALD: Just a movie, yeah. Just, it was fun and well put together by, you know, the genius himself. I enjoyed working on that film just for that reason.
GLENN: You did a lot of work with Spielberg. How did you get connected?
GERALD: I love him. I worked on a project in 1985 called The Color Purple as a production manager, and our relationship grew from that point on.
GLENN: Amazing. And now you're connected. How did you guys --
GERALD: I keep looking for geniuses.
(laughter)
DINESH: Well, someone told me that if I was going to go from being a writer and a think tank guy and a speaker to making films, that I should find someone who could really help me do that in the right way.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
DINESH: So they said, "Have you heard of this guy, Jerry Molen?" And I had -- I mean, I knew once I saw his resume. So I went and found Jerry, and I left him a copy of my book. And we talked. And we realized that although we come from opposite ends of the earth, our stories are actually unbelievably similar. By that, I mean, both of us are sort of outside guys who went into something. And we have experienced the American dream in our own life. And ultimately, our politics is based on that.
GLENN: When we're looking at the things that are coming, Dinesh, you and I have talked about the state of our country for quite some time. And I'm to the point to where I'm -- I think we've missed all the exits. We're going to pay a very heavy price. I don't know what that entails, but we're going to pay a very heavy price. And not just us, the entire western world.
DINESH: And the entire world. Because America brought something new into the world. And it's made the world a lot better. It's almost impossible to envision the 20th century without America, what would have happened to World War II. What would have happened to the Cold War? And I think Americans don't realize that for the last 65 years, they've been living in a privileged position, in which American prosperity, American power, the American passport is better than anybody else's passport. So once that goes away, history shows that it never comes back.
I mean, think of the ancient Athenians. Or think even about -- the sun did set on the British empire, and British empire is just never coming back. So America has its moment now, but if we squander it -- and I think what drives me nuts is I think that at the highest level, it's being squandered deliberately. And by deliberately, I mean by an ideological vision that wants America to be subtracted, to be shrunk, to be reduced. And if anyone had said, you know, even seven years ago that the United States would be, in a sense, in an oppositional position against Israel and aligned with Iran, I think even Democrats would have thought that was crazy. That would never happen.
GLENN: And we don't seem to care now. I mean, if I would have said to you ten years ago -- in fact, during the Obamacare debate, one of the deals was, "You're going to be paying for abortions." No, that's outrage that you could even say something like that. No, no, no. Look, now, even the Republicans won't do anything to stop us paying for Planned Parenthood and abortions. I mean, it's insane, where we have end up. And people just seem to be kind of okay with it.
DINESH: Or even the idea that this whole stand -- Shout Your Abortion. The idea of abortion as a positive good. It almost reminds me of the time when, during the American founding, slavery was seen, even by people who had slaves, as a regrettable necessity. Thomas Jefferson said, "We have the wolf by the tail. We can't hold it, and we can't let it go." So this ambivalence was there, even on the part of the South and the southern planters. But starting about the 1820s, you had the positive good school of slavery, the idea that slavery was good, not just for the slave owner, but good for the slave.
This was like taking things way beyond -- and no one thought that in the 18th century. Similarly now with abortion, we've gone from sort of safe, legal, and rare, to this sort of idea that this should be promulgated.
GLENN: That this is actually good.
DINESH: A sacrament in modern liberalism.
GLENN: Yeah. You mentioned the youth. I'm torn. There is -- there's two sides. There are those who are completely clueless that have bought into it 100 percent. See America as the bad guy. See capitalism as, you know, a horrible, horrendous thing. And then you see another side, the side generally speaking, I think it's the Christian youth, that are awake and saying, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." And are active. Which way do they fall? And how does this film actually hit them?
DINESH: I think that there's an idealism in young people that's very good. And there's a brand of conservatism that some people have been selling for 30 years, which does not resonate with young people. And that's the idea that, "Hey, you're young and idealistic, and we know that you're a liberal. But wait till you become older and jaded like we are and start having to pay taxes, and then we hope you'll swing over to our side." But that's never going to tap into the idealism of young people. We need a competing idealism.
GLENN: That's right. Are you a little shocked that in the -- we just said it earlier today. That there's not this -- that many of the people who are running today -- I said to -- which candidate was it recently? I said, "Stop with the IRS. What I'm looking for is someone who comes up and says there's a whole new way to do this." Because that's what we're doing with everything else in society. Everything else is, there's a whole new way of doing this. Why are we doing something that was started in the early teens of the last century and saying, "That's a good system." It's not. I'm looking for game-changers. I'm looking for people who say, "I have a completely new way of looking at this, through the framework of the Constitution. But a totally different system." Are you surprised that we're not getting that kind of thinking from very many -- I mean, Bernie Sanders is still looking back at the old system. But Bernie Sanders, that's what is attractive about him to so many people, is he's saying, "This doesn't work. We're going to try something entirely new."
DINESH: Yeah, both sides are actually now in a moment of reaction, in my opinion. We are -- our team is back to the '80s, and their team is back to the '60s.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
DINESH: Now, when I came to America, this was in the very late '70s, there was a kind of electricity around modern conservatism. It actually didn't come from Reagan. It preceded Reagan. A lot of the ideas that we consider Reaganism were out there. Jack Kemp was talking about supply-side economics. General Daniel Graham was talking about missile defenses. And so there was a whole new way of looking at the world, but we haven't advanced beyond that. And so I think we're back in that moment now when we do need not only new ideas, but new ways of getting those ideas out.
GLENN: Do you see them on the horizon? Do you see -- who are the leaders of tomorrow? Have you seen anybody that -- that you're excited about?
DINESH: Well, let me put it this way. I think that when I look back at Reagan. Reagan came along, and all the ideas were out there. And Reagan said, "I like this. I like that. I like this." And that became Reaganism. So, in other words, it's a mistake for us to look to these candidates and say, "You're going to save us. We're waiting for you to come up with these ideas and then we're going to -- no, the candidates are actually looking to us to generate the ideas.
GLENN: But do you see someone that is capable of selling those ideas? Like my guy is Ted Cruz. But I -- I worry about his ability to sell it to the American people. Do you see a good -- do you see a good person out there? You're going to vote today. Who are you voting for?
GERALD: Today?
GLENN: Yeah.
GERALD: Rubio?
GLENN: Why?
GERALD: Because I like his message. And the more I listen to him, the more I like it. He seems to be able to get across and make his point, I think understood by the people that he's speaking to.
DINESH: It's surprising. And I feel this a little myself. As I talk to people, "Who are you for?" And they're hesitant to say. They're hesitant to say in part because they feel that our field is wide, it's deep, it's diverse, it says a lot of good stuff out there. It's not like previous times, where we want to pull our hair out.
There's an impressive group of guys out there, and gal. But not -- one hasn't come forward, I think where people feel like, "That's our man. That's the guy who is going to take it all the way." And so we're in that shaking out moment. And Trump, of course, is in the middle of it breaking all the toys and kicking everything upside down. I don't think a bad thing, by the way. Because I think the Republican Party has been so sleepy, so out of it, so disengaged, that it takes a little bit of a bull in a China shop to wake those people --
GLENN: I really don't have a problem with him being a bull in a China shop. I'm surprised how many conservatives look at him and say, "Yeah, I'll take him." I mean, I understand he's making things interesting. He's breaking things up. I understand the role he's playing right now. But to look at him and say -- after all we've gone through, with saying, "Constitution, Constitution, Constitution." And then to have a guy who is like really not a Constitution guy.
DINESH: I think it's because people distrust the Republican team from -- look, we had a Republican House and Congress. So the question becomes, "What do those guys do all day?" I feel like Obama wakes up every morning and goes, "How do I put the knife a little more deeply into the other side?" That's his daily agenda. And our side appears to wake up thinking, "How do we prevent the knife from going a little more deeply into our back today?"
GLENN: Right.
DINESH: That's all we do. So people are annoyed, they're frustrated, and they feel maybe Trump will do something different.
GLENN: Dinesh D'souza and Gerald Molen, the name of the next project that is coming out during the Democratic Convention is Stealing America.
Stealing America by Dinesh D'souza. Thanks guys for being a part of the program.