The 1997 movie Wag the Dog, starring Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, imagines a world where the President of the United States stages a fake war to distract from his sex scandal. It’s fiction, of course, since no American president would ever imagine sullying the office in such a cynically deceptive way. But if you’re looking for a little escapism, Wag the Dog is a fun little flick from the 1990s. And it’s streaming for free right now on YouTube.
The free YouTube version, which is available to watch here, has ads that you can’t skip. But there are other ways to watch the film without ads if you’re willing to part with a few bucks, like on Amazon ($3.99 to rent, $10.49 to own), Google Play, ($3.99 to rent, $9.99 to own), or Apple ($3.99 to rent, $9.99 to own).
The movie is pretty wild as an idea. Robert DeNiro plays a political spin doctor and Dustin Hoffman plays a Hollywood producer. DeNiro’s character has to bury a sex scandal that’s about to break in the press. He recruits Hoffman’s character to help him out, and together they conspire to fool the entire country into believing that there’s a war in Albania.
The movie came out before President Bill Clinton’s own sex scandal broke in 1998 and there were comparisons to the film after Clinton decided to bomb two different countries just a few days after he admitted to a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton ordered the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan, prompting plenty of people to make comparisons to the movie’s plot.
“Look at the movie Wag the Dog. I think this has all the elements of that movie,” Rep. Jim Gibbons, a Republican from Nevada, told CNN at the time in 1998. “Our reaction to the embassy bombings should be based on sound credible evidence, not a knee-jerk reaction to try to direct public attention away from his personal problems.”
Clinton’s Defense Secretary, William Cohen, was asked specifically about the comparison to the movie at the time and he denied it, according to CNN, stating, “The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people from terrorist activities. That is the sole motivation.”
And that sure was a relief. It would’ve been horrible for a president to try and distract from some awful sex scandal by engaging in some unnecessary military action.
President Donald Trump actually received similar comparisons during his first term, if you can believe it. Trump launched airstrikes in Syria back in April 2017 at a time when people were discussing Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 presidential election. Politico even put it in the headline, plainly asking “Is Trump Wagging the Dog in Syria?”
Directed by Barry Levinson, Wag the Dog was loosely based on Larry Beinhart’s 1993 book American Hero and adapted by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet. Obviously anyone who’s kept up with Mamet, who’s best known for his plays like Glengarry Glen Ross, knows he’s a big Trump guy now. And Mamet surely knows Trump would never start a war to distract from anything so silly as a sex scandal. Unless, of course, that scandal was so big it threatened to bring down his entire presidency. But even then…
