A Conservative in Hollywood: An Interview with Amanda Milius

The following is an interview between Digital Editor of The Review Lintaro Donovan (TDR) and Amanda Milius (AM), director of “The Plot Against the President” via her production company, AMDC Films. Previously, she served in the Trump Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Content at the Department of State.

TDR: What inspired you to create “The Plot Against the President”?

AM: Well, I was just leaving my time at the White House and going back to the State Department, and there was a lot going on. My friends, other appointees who had worked much closer on the Russiagate issue, were like, “Hey, there’s this book that’s about to come out. It’s Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President.” My friend Josh basically was like, “This has to be a movie. Someone’s gotta make this into a movie. You know how to do that, right?” And I was like, “No, I’ve left the industry for three years. I can’t just turn around and whip up a movie in my kitchen tonight.”

Making a movie is a lot harder than that. I resisted it. Then I thought about it more. Each person had 48 hours with it [the manuscript] before we kind of decided [to make the film]. I was just like, “Yeah, this is amazing. We should totally do this.”

I became the designated movie maker because I was the only one who knew how to do it. I resigned and formed the company that made the movie. I then reached back out to folks that I had made movies with before—mainly my thesis film, The Lotus Gun, from USC.

I reached out and just started hiring like-minded and talented people. It was a combination of both. We didn’t want to be like the Left, where everything is an ideology test. We wanted the best people working with us. But at the same time, every single person who worked on that movie said at one point that it was an honor to be able to tell the real story of what happened [in Russiagate]. That’s the kind of vibe we wanted.

TDR: You told the Independent Women’s Forum that your father, the Hollywood screenwriter John Milius, said, “you need to learn to be the most hated person in the room.” How did you learn to be the most hated person in rooms full of liberals?

AM: By going to this horrible prep school in Los Angeles. My parents sent me there probably for that reason.

I don’t think people that aren’t from there understand the sheer lunacy, the values in these places that are so messed up. Anybody [in these places] would be like, “Why do I have to be here? I hate these people. They hate me. I’m never gonna be like them. I don’t wanna do this.” And my dad just said, “You have to learn that skill. Like, if you can maintain your own personality within a sea of people that will want you to be like them then you have learned the most valuable thing in life.” I didn’t like [what he said] at the time, but it is absolutely true.

TDR: What are your future plans in film? What message do you hope to send to audiences with your work?

AM: We have a production company called AMDC Films. We do both scripted and documentary [films]. We keep the documentary and scripted films separate, which is a business requirement.

We’re hoping to finalize our film fund for eight documentaries over the course of three years. That’s insane. It’s a lot of work, but the point is to create this production company and put out these kinds of stories and this kind of material at this quality level, meaning that they’re interesting and fun to watch and don’t feel like conservative homework. 

There’s also a lot of projects [that we could be working on]. If people are interested in working in and learning about the film industry, we would like to hear from them.

There’s a contact menu on our page, www.AMDCfilms.com. There’s a place to put people’s resumes or reels. They don’t have to have previous work in the film industry. We just want passionate young people who want to participate in the culture war.

TDR: What advice do you have for young conservatives who want to establish themselves in the arts?

AM: Learn how to be the most hated person in the room. It’s good for any artist to really learn how to listen to himself because it’s so easy to be taken up by the trend of the time, from the style of painting that people are doing these days all the way down to fashion. The whole goal of an artist is to find one’s inner voice, figure out what truth actually is, and hold oneself to high standards. 

One of the weirdest things is that in the arts, ever since we’re kids, we’re told that everybody is as good as everybody else. Participation trophies started in the arts. This is crazy because it doesn’t work that way. Aesthetics are prone to judgment. We need to bring that back. We need to hold ourselves to true technical excellence.

TDR: You worked for the Trump State Department. Will Ukraine be able to repel this Russian invasion? What impacts would a successful Russian takeover of Ukraine have on world affairs?

AM: I almost have no words for the level of fumble that this foreign policy [from the Biden Administration] is. It is so much more chaotic, out-of-control, and insane than I could have ever imagined. To see these people who had been lecturing us for the last four years just burn America’s standing in the world to the ground is something I talk about a lot. I really don’t think that most people in this country are prepared for what it’s like for America to be a non-superpower.

I count myself as a conservative nationalist. I’m all about our borders. But I don’t think that any criticism of our yearslong but currently-at-a-pinnacle disastrous foreign policy somehow means that you’re a Putin apologist or you’re a defender of some other [foreign] power. Our national security is the most important thing our government provides for us. The government’s failure at that and everything else the security state has done in the last 20 years is just a tragedy to America.

TDR: What impacts do you see if Russia does successfully take over Ukraine?

AM: People need to pay attention to Nigel Farage’s speech at CPAC Florida 2022. It was quite different from most others’. It’s very interesting since he is considered one of the thought leaders of the [Western] nationalist movement.

Because of Brexit and his stance on the EU, his views on NATO were very interesting, which were that NATO will either exist or not, but that it cannot exist without American leadership. The Trump Administration understood that we needed to get NATO countries to pay their fair share [of the NATO budget].

As much as I hate using that phrase ‘fair share,’ when we’re talking about NATO funding, there is actually a legitimate number. If this [Ukraine crisis] becomes as big of a [mess] it seems it will be, Europe is going to be unpredictable in a way that we haven’t seen since before the Second World War.

I don’t think anyone has any idea what that looks like. I don’t think people are ready for the kinds of changes that this will make on the world’s horizon.

We’re so used to thinking that America can just flip a switch and we can change the ways the winds are blowing. We’re not going to be able to anymore. And I don’t think people are ready for that. It’s bad. 

TDR: After the fall of Afghanistan and now the invasion of Ukraine, can America still be considered a superpower?

AM: We will find out when we truly have a national interest need on an international level, whether we can accomplish it or not. We’ve been spoiled by years of this superpower assumption. And I don’t know what the first moment would be when America is not a superpower. It might even be right now. We won’t know the day that we’re not a superpower anymore. We will just suddenly be surprised to wake up and know what it’s like to be the rest of the world.

TDR: If you were in charge of the American conservative movement, what would you be doing to win?

AM: I would bring the factions [of the movement] together. The way that you do that is, first of all, to know what the factions are. The problem is that a lot of the people whose intentions are to bring the factions together have no idea who they’re even talking about.

You have to be in touch with a lot of the personalities that arose in 2016. It was Trump, but it was also the wild characters that were all banned and that we never hear from, like Milo Yiannopoulous. There’s a lot of young characters that came out of 2016 that I think we need to merge with the people who are more established.

What happens to the Republican Party is that every 10 or 20 years, probably five or 10 even, there are splinters. There’s always a splinter group, whether it’s the John Birch Society or the Buchananites or the Tea Party. Every single time, the Establishment is quite able to reach its tentacles of money back into such a movement and then end the movement. And so we cannot be lured by the grift, which most people are, to kill the America First movement.

Andrew Breitbart saw what happened to the Tea Party, and I think it’s a tragedy. There’s always a splinter group because the Establishment conservatives never give conservative—real conservative—people what they actually want. The way that they quiet and dissolve these little mini-revolutions is always with money. We need to be wary of that.