‘White House Down’ Director Wanted To T-Off Conservatives [Video]

White House Down turned in dismal box office results, which is itself being lauded as a victory in the eyes of conservative pundits who have branded the film as an example of “liberal propaganda.”

The film sees the president (played by Jamie Foxx) choosing to withdraw troops from the Middle East, much to the ire of Tea Party-esque conservative politicians who attempt a military coup of the American government.

“Who needs to risk getting a mouthful of fist by spitting on our soldiers in-person when you can do it safely from on-screen? If you spend one damn cent on this crap, you’re spitting on our troops too,” wrote Kurt Schlichter for Townhall.com.

For Breitbart, Christian Toto calls Roland Emmerich’s action romp “ideological sludge” which slams “conservatives, the ‘military industrial complex,’ defense contractors and any politician who thinks it might not be wise to withdraw all troops from the Middle East.”

In his headline, he calls the film “unrelenting liberal propaganda.”

We reported earlier than many on Twitter called out the film for its liberal, anti-conservative subtext and lack of subtlety.

For his part, Emmerich seemed comfortable with courting such controversy from conservatives. He told HuffPost Live that he was “excited” about the potential for a bad review from Fox News, and that he was willing to go on the network to talk about the film.

“To promote the movie, I will talk to everybody,” he said. He was banned from the network for his previous effort The Day After Tomorrow, a climate change sermon dressed as a summer blockbuster. That film received mixed reviews in the scientific community.

As a mea culpa, Sony has announced that military service members and veterans can see the film for free on July 4. If the film really is that critical of the military (I haven’t seen it), then that might be inadvertently rubbing salt in the wound.

In any case, if Emmerich really only made the movie to flame conservatives and the military, it seems that he did so at the expense of the film’s success. A $24M opening weekend against a $150M budget and poor word-of-mouth would qualify the director as an uber-liberal martyr, if you wanted to go that far.

Did you see White House Down? Did you think that it was “liberal propaganda?” Sound off!