Donald Trump is renting out a theater near Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday evening to host a free screening of Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” according to The Des Moines Register.
“Mr. Trump would like all Americans to know the truth about what happened at Benghazi,” Tana Goertz, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” who is Trump’s Iowa co-chair, told the Register. The movie will screen at Carmike Cobblestone 9 Theatre in Urbandale.
Paramount has marketed the movie to military families, faith-based communities and conservative audiences, even though filmmakers have said that the film itself is apolitical and sticks to what happened on that evening of Sept. 11, 2012, when the US diplomatic compound came under siege. The movie focuses on the role of six CIA contractors who responded to that attack. Four Americans died, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Media Matters for America, which tracks and counters assertions made in conservative media, posted a review on Friday in which it said that the movie is “full of the kind of dog-whistles that are engineered to appeal to conservative moviegoers who have been imbibing conspiracy theories about Benghazi for years.” It challenges a suggestion in the movie that one of the CIA analysts “called for air support. It never came.” Special operations teams were ordered to deploy, but did not arrive until after the attacks were over. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates also has said that sending aircraft to the area would have risked them getting shot down.