Case File 06

Dennis Prager & 2000 Mules

PragerU's co-founder is a credited on-camera participant in one of the most thoroughly debunked pieces of 2020 election disinformation.

What the film claims

2000 Mules is a 2022 film by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, premiered at Mar-a-Lago with former President Trump in attendance. It argues that mail-in ballot drop boxes were used for coordinated, illegal ballot "harvesting" in the 2020 election, based on cellphone location data and surveillance footage compiled by the group True the Vote. source source

Dennis Prager's role

Prager appears in the film as himself, credited as host of The Dennis Prager Show, one of five Salem Media-affiliated radio hosts featured walking through the film's evidence and discussing its implications. source source A reporter covering a theatrical screening noted a viewer describing his own view of the film's claims as "agnostic," borrowing language directly from Prager's on-screen framing. source

What independent fact-checkers found

The Associated Press found the film's central claims relied on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts, and improper analysis of cellphone location data supplied by True the Vote. source FactCheck.org concluded the film's supposed evidence was speculative. source NPR separately found that True the Vote had made multiple misleading or false claims about its own work — including a false claim that it had helped solve the murder of a child in Atlanta, a claim repeated in the film. source

Not corrected or retracted by its makers. As of this writing, the filmmakers have not withdrawn the film despite the AP, FactCheck.org, and NPR findings, and it continues to be sold and promoted as accurate evidence of 2020 election fraud.

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