The Daily Signal - Dinesh D’Souza Unpacks New Film ‘Police State’

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Dinesh D‘Souza’s newest film, “Police State,” chronicles the real-life stories of everyday Americans who have endured the wrath of a weaponized government and of the whistleblowers who are exposing its abuse of power. The film will be shown Wednesday at a red-carpet event at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump, who is currently facing 91 felony charges in four separate cases, is the police state’s primary target, according to D’Souza. Ahead of the Mar-a-Lago screening, D’Souza spoke with The Daily Signal about why he embarked on this project and how he hopes the film will awaken Americans to this troubling reality. “I’m very proud of this film. It’s perhaps my most cinematic work, and also my most urgent call to action,” D’Souza says. “I’ve sort of likened myself to the animal that is warning the herd that, ‘Hey, we’re in danger. We need to take protective action.’” Visit PoliceStateFilm.net to stream the movie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've sort of likened myself to the animal that is warning the herd that, hey, we're in danger. We need to take protective action. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, November 1st. I'm Rob Blewey. And those are the words of Dinesh D'Souza, director of a new film called Police State. He's premiering it tonight at a red carpet event at President Trump's Maralago estate in Florida. And it's also available for you to stream at policedatefilm.net. DeSuzza joins the Daily Signal podcast to talk about the troubling trends in America.

and why we should all be concerned about the weaponization of law enforcement. Stay tuned for my interview after this. The Heritage Foundation is the most effective conservative policy organization in the country. Every semester, our interns are a vital part of that mission. We pay competitively. We develop talent, and we give our interns access to some of the sharpest minds in the country. We're going on offense. So join us.

To learn more about the Young Leaders Program, Here at the Heritage Foundation, please go to heritage.org slash intern. Dinesh Deneh D'Souza joins the Daily Signal today to discuss his latest film, police state. It's a powerful account of life in America today, and after watching it, you will be terrified about what's happening to our country. Dinesh, thank you for making this film. Thank you for spending some time with The Daily Signal. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

You have made films about a range of topics throughout your conference. career, what inspired you to create this one? I think it was just a personal recognition. I came to the country a generation ago as a teenager, and I was excited by the abundance and opportunity of America, as many immigrants are, but I was also exhilarated at this idea that you have these basic unalienable rights to founders call them. And a number of them, not all, but a number enumerated in the Bill of Rights. So, right to free speech. So right to free speech. right to conscience or religious freedom, right to assemble, to petition the government for redress, equal rights and equal justice under the law. And so fast forward to now, and I looked around and I said,

wait, not a single one of these rights is completely secure. And in fact, as we look around the world and look at the classic police states, North Korea, China, the old Soviet Union, and you ask what are their defining characteristics? Things like mass surveillance. or systematic censorship, ideological indoctrination in the schools and the media, the effort to go after political opponents and lock them up, the existence of political prisoners. So you go down this checklist and you realize again that a number of these features, to one degree or another,

are now present right here in America. It's a very dismaying and alarming idea and very powerful one for a film to explore. In your review of how this has, happened here in our country. Is this something that you attribute primarily to the current regime that's in office, or was it a slow erosion of these rights that happened over a period of time? I would say that there are three landmark events that are worth taking note of. One is the aftermath of 9-11 when a lot of police new surveillance powers were given to the government, admittedly for the purpose of focusing on Islamic terrorists abroad. Those have been later redeployed domestically.

against political opponents, the process that I think began under Obama, but was rapidly escalated under Biden. The other two events worth noting are COVID and January 6th. So what these events have in common is that there is an exploitation of public fear and to undermine rights that would never otherwise be given up. So after COVID, suddenly it's like you can't freely assemble. You can't go to church. And after January 6th, oh, you know, you've got an insurrection. So we now have to expand the sphere of censorship. It goes beyond health issues. It now includes discussion of the elections and then later many other issues are added. So the pretext may vary. The rationale is different, but the movement is all in the same direction. It's toward a tightening of

social controls and a jeopardizing of one right after another to the point where really none of them is completely safe. And well, it seems that the left is certainly weaponizing government to achieve its ends. As you document in the film, it doesn't end there. Corporations and other aspects of American society have been encapsulated in this as well. What can an individual do about it? I mean, Are there things that you want them to take away from your film that they should think about in their own life, the risk that they may now face? Yeah, the most important job of a film is to alert people that the situation is different than you think. Even on the Republican side, on the conservative side, there's a lot of complacency. People are sort of like the antelope or the wildebeest, they're grazing kind of placidly.

And if I tell them, hey, guys, there's a predator in the trees. they go, oh, no, Denech, it's just the wind, or, you know, yeah, there's a predator, but he's not going to land on my back. So there's denialism, there's an effort to look away. We don't really live in the Reagan era anymore. And yet there's probably a sizable chunk of people right of center who are just kind of wishing we did. They're pining for that kind or gentler America. And as a result, they don't see that we've seen a gangsterization of our politics on the left. Now, you're right.

some of it's in the government, but some of it also is in these kind of roving militias that the left is able to deploy. And these are guys who operate as if they're above the law. I mean, if you looked at those kind of Hamas, Palestine activists in the cannon building, you know, you look at their faces, there's not the slightest hint of fear. Hey, we're going to be rounded up. We're going to find ourselves in solitary confinement. We're going to be locked up for months awaiting trial. We'll be facing serious charges. No, they were like, we know that's never going to happen to us. we are in that sense above the law. And that's a good hallmark of a police state. You tell some incredibly powerful stories and personal accounts in the film. Can you share with us

how you selected those individuals who you sought out and interviewed? I wanted to have two kinds of individuals in the film. The first is whistleblowers, informants, people who had direct and personal knowledge of how this police state started, how it developed, how it's organized, the architecture of it, who's in charge of it. And so that's a reason, for example, I teamed up with Dan Bongino. He's a former NYPD officer, a secret service agent. So this is really something he knows a lot about. And we have other not just FBI whistleblowers,

but whistleblowers from the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, HHS, the Health and Human Services Department, the air marshals. I mean, it is amazing how many areas of government are penetrated by these sort of police state tactics. The other type of person in the film is ordinary guys kind of going about their life and they come face to face with what Orwell calls the boot stamping on the human face.

And I think that's really important because I want people to realize it's not just about Trump. Yes, he is the primary target. Yes, these 90-plus charges are over the top. That's exact, you know, classic police state thuggery. But it's not just about Trump, but it's not even just about the January 6th protesters. We have a section on January 6th,

which I think casts a new light and gives new information about January 6th. But I also want to show that you've got people who are moms who are involved in their kids' education. You've got pro-life activists. You've got traditional Catholics. You've got people just kind of doing their thing in their America, living out their American dream. And then they realize, wait, why is someone knocking on my door? Is that a battering ram? Why is that a helicopter over my lawn?

And I think this can actually happen to anyone. Yeah, I think that one of the most powerful aspects of the film, at least in my case, was the opening scene where you depict what an individual, an ordinary American, would be experiencing should the police and FBI and others invade their house and take them into custody for something that they thought was a peaceable action. And so, you know, from that standpoint, it really is dramatic. The story of Mark Hauk, you know, others who we've documented here at The Daily Signal, appreciate you giving them. the attention that I think that other Americans need to be aware of what they've endured. Yeah, with Mark Halk, you know, he had some of the dash cam footage and some of the actual footage of the raid at his house. And so we got that. It's in the film. At the same time, he gave us a clinical description of what happened blow by blow. And we hired FBI consultants

to recreate it. That's the opening scene. That is actually Mark Halk at the opening scene. And I wanted to do these recreations with so much authenticity. that if somebody was watching from the FBI, they would be like, whoa, that's exactly how that would have gone down. So the power of a film is that we can discuss the police state. You can tell people about the police state, but without them feeling it and seeing it and experiencing it, it has a certain unreality.

People are able to sort of avert their gaze. No, it's not going to happen here. We're so accustomed in America to thinking of a police state as a Stalin overcoat or a Hitler mustache that when a police state appears here in America, accents and marching behind the banner of saving democracy and upholding the rule of law and fighting for truth against misinformation, it's a facade that is aimed at succoring people into believing that there isn't a naked brutality behind what's going on, but there is.

Yeah, that's well said. You, in the film, you mentioned January 6th. It's a topic that I think many daily signal listeners are concerned about because they don't feel they have the full story. there was this congressional commission that attempted to uncover the truth. And really, I think we were left with more questions than answers at the end of the day. You mentioned that you cover new ground in the film without giving too much away. Can you share with us about your interview with Julie Kelly and others who have been keeping a

close eye on what is really happening with the January 6th political prisoners? So one of the things we do in the film is we uncover all this new detail that is really kind of disturbing and shocking. So for example, we point out that there are air marshals today who have been assigned to follow people who flew into D.C. in the time period of January 6th, so let's say January 3rd through January 7th. Now, these are not people who went in the Capitol. They're not even people who went to the rally. If you went to Washington, D.C., for any reason, you could be a kid rejoining your dad for a weekend. You have an air marshal following you right now. And if you go meet your and your dad is sitting with your uncle, your uncle could find himself on a list.

This is kind of how this perverse system works. Now, with regard to January 6th, a lot of times when you have two radically different narratives, you have to ask yourself why that is the case. How is it possible? It's kind of like if you and I were to see an accident, we're eating at a cafe, and we give completely different accounts. You'd have to figure out why is it that we're both looking at the same thing, but giving such an opposed account.

So I think the key thing with January 6 is to understand what is the root underlying premise. So the root underlying premise of the January 6th committee and of the left is that there was something going on in the capital that the Trumpsters desperately wanted to stop. And what was that? The certification of the election. And so that's the hidden premise. That is the assumption that makes everything else make sense. Now, let's say that that premise is wrong. Let's say that what was actually going on in the capital, and this in fact is true, is not the certification.

of the election, but the questioning of the election. Here's Ted Cruz, here is a whole bunch of senators getting ready to challenge Arizona, they're getting ready to challenge Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, all the swing states. Now, the Trumpsters had no motive at all to stop that. In fact, that's what they wanted to continue. Their whole point is we've had no real adjudication of the claim of fraud. And so, and so the moment that those guys got in the Capitol, what was stopped? The process of the questioning of the election. That suddenly became moot. We have, I think, one of the Congressman Troy Nails, he goes, when we came back after the January 6th stuff, we just didn't have the heart of it. You know, we were sort of deflated. And so we just decided,

we're not going to question the election. And basically Biden and Harris was certified almost immediately. So the point to be made here is that who had a motive for, in a sense, orchestrating January 6th? Not the Trumpsters. but the left, the Democrats. And so when you switch out that premise, a lot of things make sense. Why do you have, like, police officers standing there? And to my knowledge, not a single one of them ever said, all of you need to leave this building right now.

You cannot be in this building. This is a prohibited building. Why didn't they make the obvious announcement? I mean, if you're in a museum and you see a section that says, don't go there and there's a cop sitting there and you walk by him, he's going to be like, hey, stop, you can't go there. And yet that was the dog that didn't bark at January 6. So we reconstruct the events of January 6 to cast a new light on it.

And people who are leaving, I think, will be like, yeah, the official story really doesn't make any sense. Well, along those lines, in addition to talking to the whistleblowers and the everyday Americans, you mentioned one of the congressmen you spoke to, Troy Nell's. You also talked to Chairman Jim Jordan. You talked to Senator Rand Paul. Why was it important for you to have their voices as leading people in Congress who are speaking out on these issues? Well, the importance of Jim Jordan is the fact that you not only have the efforts to go after

Trump, but the very same agencies that are going after Trump are protecting Biden. And so there is a kind of a glaring double standard here, a double standard that needs to be explained because usually when there's a double standard behind it is a single standard. And I think in this case, the single standard is very simply this, that a police state will protect all the people who are seen as helping to build the police state. And a police state will relentlessly oppose all the people who are seen as threatening the police state. That's the single standard. That's the consistent position adopted by the police state. Now, Jordan has been all over this, and he has a lot of concrete detail about it, and he can speak

with authority about it because he's been able to review the original proof and the original documents. I think the power of Rand Paul is that when we flash back to the aftermath of 9-11, when many people, me included, said, you know, we got to give the government these new surveillance powers, we've got to take down some of these barriers between, let's say, intelligence on the one hand and criminal investigation on the other. In other words, empower the U.S. government to go after these radical Islamic terrorists. There were people, and I think Rand Paul, but mostly his dad, Ron Paul, who warned and said, hey, wait, be careful here because when you give the government this kind of power, it can be,

and will be used against you, used against American citizens, it will be abused. And little did we know at that time that he would prove to be very prophetic. So I think it made sense to have someone with that kind of perspective in the film, and I think the two of them are a big asset. Yeah, used in ways that I think many of our listeners and many other Americans probably don't even realize. I have a colleague who used to work at Facebook and talks about how some of these tools that were once used to target terrorists are now being used to target conservatives by the tech platforms. And so even private companies are relying and working with government to deploy them. You and I have been working on a screening for members of Congress, which is

coming up in a couple of weeks here in Washington, D.C. What steps would you like to see other lawmakers take to address the concerns related to the police state? Well, a police state, our kind of police state is kind of scary because it is not simply a matter of something that is operating at a centralized node of government where you can identify it and say, all right, if we change that one thing, it will be fixed. If you look at censorship, for example, you have academics compiling long lists of people that they want to be banned. You've got the Biden administration, multiple agencies involved, not just the CDC, not just the White House, but the State Department, the Homeland Security, the SISA, the cybersecurity and infrastructure agency.

And then you've got the digital platforms, but you've also got the nonprofits. Very often the government will not hand off directly to the digital platforms because they're worried that that will be too flagrant a violation of the First Amendment. So it's like, let's get it in the middleman. Let's give our list of people to be banned to the Stanford Internet Observatory or the so-called Verality Project. They will then deliver it to the digital platform. So look at all the different actors involved.

And so what this means is that to get rid of a police state, to reverse it, you need a lot of steps. You need the White House to restructure the police agencies of government. You need the Congress to take care of allocations. But I think you also need Supreme Court decisions, and there's a big one coming up next spring, Missouri v. Biden. The court is declined to give an injunction, which means the censorship is continuing right now, and things move slowly with the court.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping that in the spring of next year, they will deliver a massive drop kick to government-sponsored censorship. It's not to say that the platforms can't do their own censorship, but you want to withdraw the grubby fingers of government from this enterprise. Well, Dinesh, before we do the screening together at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, you're going to be at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago. Why was it important for you to pick that venue to have this rollout? Well, I think it's because like it or not, he is the primary target of the police state. Look, you know, in any other country, if the opposition leader, the year before the election, is suddenly slapped with like 90 plus charges that could put him in jail for the rest of his life, it's very obvious what's going on.

This is a political targeting of the most grotesque kind. Had it been a single charge against Trump, you know, hey, he took these classified documents, he's stubbornly hanging on to them. We are forced to file a criminal charge to get them back. But no, the fact that you've got a shotgun approach, which is we'll get him in D.C., and if we fail, we'll get him in Florida or maybe in Georgia. If the federal doesn't work, we'll get him on state.

And if the state doesn't work, the criminal charges don't work at all. Let's wreck his businesses. So this is classic police state thuggery. So it seemed appropriate to do our premiere at Marlago. In fact, we did our premiere in Marlago for 2,000 mules as well. It's a beautiful location. So it has a lot of the kind of optics. People love to go there.

And so it's going to be a great crowd. Well, congratulations on the release. And tell our listeners how they can stream, purchase the film, where it's available. We had a very successful opening in theaters. It was limited theaters, but about 7 or 800 showings of the film, the theaters were jam-packed, rave reviews. We then had a virtual premiere, which was watching online. And now the film is available on multiple placements.

to stream it. So you can purchase it, you can stream it and watch it. You can also connect it to your big screen TV and watch it that way and DVDs are also available for sale. The one-stop shop to sign up for all this is the website. It's police statefilm.net. Policestatefilm.net. So that will take you to where you can buy the DVD or where there are three platforms that are streaming the film so you can choose where you want to watch it. And Dinesh, as I mentioned earlier, you're the creator of several previous. movies. You mentioned one of them, 2000 mules. How can people follow your work? Where is the best place to get more information about what you're up to? In social media, just follow me at Dinesh Jesuza. That's my handle on X. And I'm also on Facebook. I do a daily podcast, which is audio and video. And audio, it's on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Video. It's on YouTube and Rumble. But I would recommend starting with the film. It's very proud of this film. It's perhaps my most cinematic work. And also my most urgent call to

I've sort of likened myself to the animal that is warning the herd that, hey, we're in danger, we need to take protective action. And so policestatefilm.net is the place to start. Well, as somebody who's watched it, I can attest that it is beautifully done. It is, as I mentioned earlier, terrifying to watch because it is something that we're experiencing right before our very eyes. And I think all Americans need to take notice of what's going on. And so, Dinesh, thank you for spending time with The Daily Signal. Signal. I look forward to hosting you and your team at the Heritage Foundation for our screening in a couple of weeks. Awesome. Looking forward to it. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you

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