He directed and produced Fahrenheit 9/11, a critical look at the early presidency of George W. Bush and the War on Terror, which earned $119,194,771 to become the highest-grossing documentary at the American box office of all time.

[1] In September 2008, he released his first free film on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documents his personal quest to encourage Americans to vote in presidential elections.

Moore's works criticize topics such as globalization, big business, assault weapon ownership, Presidents Bill Clinton,[4] George W. Bush, and Donald Trump,[5] the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism overall.

[32][33][34][35] Singer-songwriter Harry Chapin is credited with being the primary benefactor in bringing about the bi-weekly newspaper's launch, by performing benefit concerts and donating the money to Moore.

Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua.

"[40] Chairman of the Foundation for National Progress (which owns Mother Jones) Adam Hochschild said that Moore was fired due to performing poorly at his job.

[39] Moore has contended that Mother Jones fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.

Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with some of the seed money,[41] with other fund raising efforts, including bingo games,[42] for his first film, Roger & Me.

[44] The 1989 film Roger & Me was Moore's first documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico where the workers were paid lower wages than their American counterparts.

[45] Critic Roger Ebert defended Moore's handling of the timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that had less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a satiric viewpoint.

[47] Moore's 1995 satirical film Canadian Bacon features a fictional U.S. president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada to boost his popularity.

[1] Shortly after winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Bowling for Columbine, Moore spoke out against U.S. President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, which had just started three days prior.

[56] Moments after the speech concluded, to lighten the mood, host Steve Martin joked, "The Teamsters are helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his limo.

[1] In February 2011, Moore sued producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein for US$2.7 million in unpaid profits from the film, claiming they used "Hollywood accounting tricks" to avoid paying him the money.

[74] Godfrey Cheshire, writing for Roger Ebert.com, wrote that "Moore's surprising and extraordinarily winning Where to Invade Next will almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into consternation".

[78] In May 2017, it was announced that Moore had reunited with Harvey Weinstein to direct his new film about Donald Trump, titled Fahrenheit 11/9, which was released in approximately 1,500 theaters in the United States and Canada on September 21, 2018.

The film makes the argument that, since the first Earth Day, the condition of the planet has worsened, and questions whether mainstream approaches adopted by industry to mitigate climate change, entail environmental impacts whose costs are comparable to or even possibly outweigh the benefits.

Stupid White Men (2001) is ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, is also "a book of political humor".

[93] Between 1994 and 1995, Moore directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid.

Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".

[97][98] Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from The Battle of Los Angeles: "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify".

"[117] According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism",[118] and publications such as the Socialist Worker Online have hailed him as the "new Tom Paine".

[127] Moore drew attention in 2004 when he used the term "deserter" to describe then president George W. Bush while introducing Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark at a Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire.

[135][136][137][138] After Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died in March 2013, Moore praised him for "eliminating 75 percent of extreme poverty" while "[providing] free health and education for all".

"[143][144] In an op-ed piece for The New York Times published on December 31, 2013, Moore assessed the Affordable Care Act, calling it "awful" and adding that "Obamacare's rocky start ... is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go."

"[157] On November 12, 2016, Moore participated in a NYC anti-Trump rally which was later (in 2018) alleged to have been organized by Russians who were indicted by Robert Mueller for meddling in the 2016 election.

[158][159] Moore posted a message to his personal website, explaining the motivation of the new venture and that he wanted any information related to: "crimes, breaches of public trust and misconduct committed by Donald J. Trump and his associates".

[166] On August 10, 2019, Moore tweeted: "I guess they think a country dumb enough to elect Trump is stupid enough to believe Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

[185] Former Democratic mayor of New York City Ed Koch, who had endorsed Bush for re-election, wrote an op-ed in which he described Moore's film as propaganda.

After the killing of Brian Thompson, former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Reason wrote:Eliding the question of whether it's appropriate to murder an apparently random executive as a synecdoche of the entire health insurance industry, Moore merely says the anger felt by Mangione and others is "1000% justified" and "I'm not going to tamp it down or ask people to shut up.