Who Is Dinesh D'Souza? 'Hillary's America' Filmmaker Has History Of Railing Against Liberals

Dinesh D'Souza, the man behind the new documentary film "Hillary's America," has a long history of railing against liberals. His latest movie, centering on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, is no exception. The movie warns of a devious plot to steal the country, according to critics who have reviewed the film.

The movie begins with background on D'Souza himself. It shows him pleading guilty to federal campaign finance laws after officials said he "used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012," reported Politico. D'Souza, 55, says it was all a set-up for his "film criticizing the most powerful man in the world." That's in reference to "2016: Obama's America," his documentary movie that imagined an apocalyptic end to the president's time in office and claimed Obama held a hatred of the U.S.

"Hillary's America" is a similar film. "What if their plan is to steal — America?" D'Souza asks about liberals in the film that has about an hour of material describing how "the Democratic Party was the party of slavery," according to the New York Times.

D'Souza was born in Mumbai, India, and has been a prominent figure in conservative circles for years. He originally worked for think tanks, a Newsweek profiled from 2012 points out, and wrote generally well-received books. But D'Souza's more recent writing, including the books "The Enemy at Home" and "The Roots of Obama’s Rage," were received poorly from people on both ends of the political spectrum for being sensationalist.

His next move might be a blockbuster insead of his usual documentary approach. "I’m giving some serious thought to putting my toe in the water of feature films," he told Variety. "At the end of the day, Hollywood’s most powerful messaging is not in documentary films."

He said he isn't particularly concerned that the critics have panned his latest work, "Hillary's America." Pittsburgh's TribLive called it "timely but incoherent," saying the film has a "slippery grasp on truth," and that the only redeeming moments are when it "veers into unintentional comedy." The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that D'Souza and his co-director Bruce Schooley "fumble to make their case, creating a cheesy, tedious rehash of old accusations and dubious history." The AV Club called the film the end to a "lunatic political trilogy," in reference to "2016: Obama's America" and D'Souza's previous film "America."

None of this bothers D'Souza. "The truth of it is, I actually don’t care what those guys say," he told Variety. "I only care about the audience reaction, which you’ll notice is a lot more favorable. I’m not worried. A 14 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That, in my opinion, is way too high."