Last weekend, Plano-based Cinemark became the only major movie theater chain in the U.S. to show 2000 Mules, a documentary claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.
The film has drawn widespread criticism for its inaccuracies and absurd claims of election fraud. The film’s director, right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, was convicted of violating federal election law himself in 2014 and pardoned by Trump in 2018.
The documentary is based around a claim by D’Souza and a Texas-based nonprofit organization called True The Vote that alleges that 2,000 so-called “mules” working for the Democratic party illegally stuffed ballot boxes with multiple votes each, swaying the popular vote for President Joe Biden. True The Vote claims that it can prove this with cellphone location data it has obtained.
The owner of the location data cited by the documentary says the claims about its data proving election fraud are categorically false, according to a recent report from NPR. Analyses from The Washington Post, Politifact and The Associated Press have determined the documentary’s allegations to be misleading if not entirely false.
Cinemark, the third-largest theater chain in the U.S., has given D’Souza’s claims a massive audience with showings at 169 theaters across the country, according to a report from Popular Information.
Cinemark did not respond to The Dallas Morning News’ request for comment about how it vets the claims made in the documentaries it chooses to feature in theaters.
Outside Cinemark, the film’s platform has been limited to right-wing streaming service Rumble and D’Souza’s personal website.
Donald Trump hosted a viewing party for D’Souza’s film and showered it with praise, though right-wing cable networks including Fox News and Newsmax have shied away from showing it.
Cinemark founder and executive chairman Lee Roy Mitchell has been a Republican donor for years and is a supporter of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton was in Washington, D.C., himself the day of the Jan. 6 insurrection and has tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in which Americans overwhelmingly voted Biden into office.
Like Trump, Paxton tweeted about hosting a showing of his own for D’Souza’s film on the evening of May 14.
It was great to see so many people at my screening of #2000Mules last night. It’s a very compelling documentary. Everyone needs to watch it. #VoterFraud is real & we must join together to stop it!
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) May 15, 2022
Thanks to @danielledzouzag & Chris Salcedo who joined me at the movie. pic.twitter.com/JyiryLkW54
Increasingly, North Texas businesses are coming under fire for their support of far-right Republicans who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results despite a complete lack of evidence that fraud occurred.
Last week, AT&T dealt with protests from advocacy organizations and unions, but its shareholders voted down an activist shareholder proposal demanding that it issue a report detailing when its support for politicians conflicts with its publicly stated values. Toyota has also found itself in the crosshairs for its donations to election objectors.
