MyPillow guy Mike Lindell’s new social platform doesn’t have an optimal launch

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s new alternative social media platform FRANK – which should (somehow) stand for “Free, Forthright and Sincere Expression of Speech” – was originally slated to be intrepid pro-Trump and pro-pillow. users last Thursday at midnight. That deadline came and went without a successful launch, and another was scheduled for Monday at 9am Eastern Time. Nor did it happen.

Instead, the bedding tycoon, whose company filed a $ 1.6 billion dollar lawsuit Monday against Dominion Voting Systems – just in line with Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Lindell and his company – stayed in his trusted domain, hosting a disjointed live stream that is being described as a Frank-a-thon, ‘interrupted by pranksters and an improvised interview with a Salon reporter. (This one.)

FRANK’s “VIP” launch on Thursday was endlessly hyped by Lindell during countless appearances on Steve Bannon’s podcast and guest appearances on just about every far-right YouTube channel under the sun. Early adopters could get on the platform before others and seize a golden opportunity to learn how FRANK worked. But the Thursday night launch never took off, leaving many of Lindell’s most loyal fans asking each other hopeless questions and not missing a good night’s sleep.

“The launch is a failure, but that is forgivable, not communicating is not,” wrote a Lindell supporter on Telegram. “Can someone call Mike?” another user asked the group. Many people on pro-Trump forums and followers of Lindell’s Telegram account stayed up until the wee hours of the morning on Friday, waiting for the platform to go live, which didn’t happen. When Salon spoke to Lindell about Thursday’s failure during our Monday night live conversation, Lindell described his fans’ complaints as a bunch of “bots.”

Over the weekend, there was no communication from Lindell to his supporters online regarding FRANK’s status, but the pillow cop did show up at the far-right “Health and Freedom Conference” in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where he delivered a cookie cutter. blunt speech with conference attendees.

With Thursday, FRANK’s for-real was still on Monday at 9 a.m. The clock ticked after that hour and Lindell’s website showed error messages. The new era of “free speech” was epitomized, at least for now, by a “502” page.

Lindell finally responded to his disgruntled potential users on Monday by claiming to Parler that his site “had a massive attack on it.” He added, “We’re working to fix it ASAP! Thank you for your patience.”

Things didn’t get any better from then on as Lindell’s live Frank-a-thon was disrupted by a series of prank phone calls, including one that opened with an audio clip of Donald Trump saying, “Hello, everyone.” Lindell seemed overjoyed at the prospect of the former president calling him to congratulate him, replying, “Ah, we’ve got the president here – our real president, everyone. Hello, Mr. President! ‘

Those high expectations came to nothing when the caller yelled, “MacronShow.com, bitches!” before hanging up. He later identified himself as Ron Blackman, host of the UK podcast “The Macron Show”.

Lindell did not appear to be following up on the prank calls and at one point stated, “We were attacked by the biggest attack in history for a website.” During his Monday night conversation with Salon, he expressed himself about the alleged “attack”, claiming it was the work of a “hacker”. “My phone has been hacked,” Lindell said. “I’ve got guys here; we’ve got protection; we’ve got cyber guys. Yes, it’s been hacked, and yes, we have proof.”

In a follow-up interview on Tuesday, Lindell appeared to acknowledge that he had been lugged around by a joker on Monday, suggesting he hoped to file criminal charges against Blackman. “We found out who the man is and we’re going to try to arrest him,” Lindell told Salon. ‘It’s the same man! We’re examining him! ‘ When asked why law enforcement would be interested in a prankster, Lindell hung up.

Lindell’s long and difficult Monday culminated in the 30-minute conversation with this reporter, which left the sleep entrepreneur furious. When Salon asked about Lindell’s refusal to drop his baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, he referred to his two-hour “documentary” which reuses some discredited and sometimes contradictory claims. “I put out ‘Absolute Proof’ – what part of it did you not believe?” Lindell stated. What part did you disbelieve when you said ‘baseless’? What should I do? I’ve spent millions of dollars! ‘

After that, Lindell kept interrupting this reporter with a seemingly random stream of thoughts, at one point he offered this reporter a job at FRANK if Salon published an article entitled, “Why Shouldn’t Dominion Show Us Their Machines?”

Later in the long night, Lindell turned his ire on The Daily Beast, along with other journalists who have documented the pillow CEO’s myriad false and misleading claims. “You are cowards,” Lindell told viewers, addressing Daily Beast reporters Asawin Suebsaeng, Justin Baragona and Adam Rawnsley rhetorically.

Jared Holt, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab who studies extremism and far-right media, told Salon Monday that he suspects people in conservative circles are willing to admit Lindell’s obsessions because of the financial support he can provide.

“Mike Lindell is taken by the people around him,” said Holt. “All the different products and ventures Lindell undertakes, be it a pseudo-documentary film or a social media platform, are very expensive endeavors. Someone is taking Lindell’s money from him to produce this stuff. what Mike Lindell has to say goes as far as his ability to write checks “to fellow conservative experts and influencers. “In the case of Dan Bongino or Diamond and Silk,” added Holt, “it is worth considering whether any of them have received financial support or sponsorship from Mike.”

Lindell claimed during his Monday interview with Salon that his website had attracted more than 90 million unique visitors. Since it was broken for much of the day, that seems unbelievable. At 5 a.m. Tuesday, the Frank-a-thon was over for the past 48 hours, and Lindell’s video channel was running programming again from Monday’s day of blunders.

You can watch the full interview Salon had with Lindell here: Part 1 and Part 2.

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