The government ejected our film crew from the Washington Monument. It tells you everything about why we made this documentary.
A federal government with nothing to hide doesn’t just “toss out” a film crew from one of the most famous public places in the nation’s capital. Especially not when the filmmakers start pointing out the ways in which the president has betrayed the American people. That would seem suspicious, no?
Let me back up for a second. Next week — one week before the midterm elections — we’re releasing a documentary about Donald Trump and his enablers’ abuses of power. It’s called CORRUPTIONLAND. We’ve been working on it for a while. And in September, our film crew went up the Washington Monument to get something no other vantage point in America offers: a full 360-degree view of “the swamp” and what Trump has done to it since returning to office.
That’s when he ran into a roadblock. Last night on Jen Psaki’s show on MS NOW, I told part of the story.
But here’s what happened in full.
We arrived on an ordinary weekday and got tickets like everyone. To be clear, the Washington Monument permits cameras. Tourists and social-media influencers film up there every single day. So we brought in our handheld cameras, got waved through by the first set of guards, and cleared the physical security screening zone. Nobody raised an eyebrow. In fact, they specifically inspected our equipment and gave us the go-ahead.
Then we got to the top of the monument and started rolling. I spoke about how the corruption in Trump’s Washington was so blatant that you could see it everywhere, pointing through the little windows to the specific locations where the president has defaced the nation’s capital or engaged in corruption — from the torn-up reflecting pool to the Kennedy Center to the ground where he’s building a soaring arch in his own honor, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial.
That’s when two National Park Service (NPS) staff approached and asked us to stop filming.
I calmly asked why. They said we weren’t permitted. I explained that what we were doing didn’t require a permit, and that we’d checked the NPS website in advance to be sure. They stepped away to confer, discussing the subject matter of our documentary. We resumed filming.
Then I walked around to another side and pointed out the mess that’s been made at the public golf course that Trump is ripping up and how Congress never gave him the authorization, to say nothing of the White House ballroom monstrosity that you could see from the other set of windows.
All the while, I could tell in my peripheral vision that the NPS staff were still huddling, nervously. Of course they were nervous. In Trump’s Washington, every federal agency has been politicized and every federal employee has been made to fear the president’s retribution. They’ve watched tens of thousands of their colleagues get fired or forced out merely on the suspicion that they are disloyal.
One of the NPS staff walked back over with the verdict.
“You need to leave.”
We tried to point out the absurdity, especially because other tourists had just emerged from the elevator, too, and were filming! With cameras not much different than our own. When it became clear the Park Service wouldn’t budget, we decided not to make a scene. After only a few minutes at the top of the Washington Monument, we were directed to depart the premises. In fact, they escorted us to the elevator, took us to the bottom, and made sure we walked out of the facility.
That’s the extent of the fear in Washington, D.C. today. Civil servants eject a documentary crew from a monument that belongs to the public, built to honor a man who gave up power voluntarily. Why? Evidently because the subject being discussed was a president who craves power — and uses it to instill fear in our government and across the nation.
By the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve watched the Park Service get politicized under Trump. Earlier this year, NPS went after D.C. protesters who we’ve collaborated with to oppose the president’s corruption. In fact, the agency threatened to take down their signs and revoke their permits because they displayed posters about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. NPS said the posters were “obscene” and that another one posed a “threat,” until a federal judge intervened and ruled this summer that the signs were “well within the heartland of protected First Amendment speech” and permanently ordered the agency to stand down.
I’ll say this. The Trump administration can keep trying to bully and intimidate us all they want. But what they cannot do is stop this film from coming out.
There’s a very good reason it exists. This summer, I called my colleague Xander at DEFIANCE.org and said: we’re seeing three Watergate-level scandals a day, and then we forget them. People forget Trump fired the people who investigated him and are supposed to monitor public corruption… they forget about his kids investing in companies that then win Pentagon contracts… they forget about his arrests of journalists and prosecution of foes. There’s so much of it that none of it sticks.
But what Xander said did stick with me. He said all these stories are really one story. We’re being robbed, by a man who captured the federal government, in a million different ways at once.
So we decided to make that one story. And we did it without a studio or a news network or a billionaire backer — a film finished in a record sprint. As I write this, I’m still waiting on the final edit, partly because every single week there’s been new corruption related to what we filmed. Just this week, the president stood at a rally and told Marine families poisoned at Camp Lejeune that if his party wins, they’ll get their settlement money, and “if we don’t win, there’s no money.”
He’s making our case faster than we can film it.
The result is CORRUPTIONLAND, a 35-minute documentary that gets to the core of the rot in Trump’s Washington. And along with it, we’ll be releasing a map that tallies up the dollar value of that corruption. I’m gonna tell you right now, even I was blown away by the preliminary number, and I thought I’d seen it all.
We’re releasing this one week before the election for the obvious reason: Congress is one of the last guardrails to stop corruption, and voters need to wake up. Thankfully, many are. Corruption is the number one voting issue this election cycle, for the first time since polling began, and it’s animating people to get to the polls. Hopefully, YOU can use this film to stir even more people to action.
So, save these dates:
Monday, October 26, 8pm ET — THE VIRTUAL PREMIERE. This is for all DEFIANCE.org Members who helped make the documentary possible. Your link arrives in this inbox before Monday. The event will include special guests, people from the film, then the documentary itself, the night before anyone else sees it.
If you’re not a DEFIANCE.org Member, you can join today and be in the room with us Monday night.
Tuesday, October 27, 12pm ET — CORRUPTIONLAND streams free for everyone at corruptionland.org, one week before Election Day. I really hope you’ll watch it, share it with someone who’s stopped paying attention, and host a watch party if you’re up for it.
They tried to stop us from filming it. Help us make sure everyone sees it.
Your friend, in defiance,
P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.
DEFIANCE DAILY
In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!
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