A day after being kicked off Twitter for repeatedly sharing election disinformation, Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, appeared on Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson’s program Tuesday night for an extremely sympathetic interview – and started bizarre conspiracies left and right. to fire.
Lindell has been one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest boosters, providing financial backing to many of the pro-Trump lawsuits that sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Following the insurgent riot sparked by Trump, Lindell claimed the attack was “very peaceful” and blamed the violence on “undercover antifa dressed as Trump people.”
The pillow salesman has gone on to argue that millions of Trump votes have turned to Biden over a nefarious international conspiracy involving late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and corrupt voting software, opening up to legal threats from Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell, who says he “welcomes” a lawsuit, also personally visited the White House during Trump’s last days in office to sell him his latest theory of electoral fraud. (White House lawyers have dismissed his claims.)
Carlson, whose show is largely supported by MyPillow ads following a sponsorship exodus, welcomed Lindell Tuesday night by praising his program’s main benefactor.
“He is one of our biggest sponsors and we are grateful for that,” said Carlson. He sponsors freedom of speech. But of course the orthodoxy enforcers are not impressed, they are outraged. Due to the crime he has different opinions, Mike Lindell has been banned from Twitter. “
Following Lindell’s ban, Twitter said Lindell was “permanently banned for repeated violations of our civic integrity policy.” The new policy was put in place after the uprising and notes that anyone who constantly shares false election information can be excluded.
After noting that a number of retailers have also stopped selling Lindell’s products after his conspiracy, Carlson – fresh from the QAnon conspirators – portrayed the founder of MyPillow as a fighter of free speech and a victim of censorship.
“It seems pretty clear they are messaging,” said the Fox host. “People who the audience recognizes can’t get out of step because you could convince others to do the same. Are you accepting another message or do you think that’s why they are doing this to you? “
From there, Lindell quickly turned the interview into an opportunity to make bizarre and unfounded claims, with Carlson in attendance for the most part, letting his biggest sponsor go to town.
Lindell noted that he was banned by Twitter earlier this month for tweeting about election fraud, then insisted that Twitter “ didn’t delete it completely ” and that someone at the social media company was running his account for two weeks.
“I just couldn’t do anything and they used my Twitter like they were me,” he continued. “My friends go, you don’t tweet much and if you do – I said I don’t so I’m trying to delete it and I have something from Germany that says these are Twitter rules and you can’t do this , so they ran my Twitter for 14 or 15 days. “
Lindell then claimed – without any evidence – that after Dominion threatened him with a lawsuit over his bogus voting software claims, “they hired hit groups and bots and trolls and went after all my salespeople and checkouts to cancel me.”
While he did not promote or endorse Lindell’s comments, Carlson viewed the MyPillow chief’s conspiracies as part of normal discourse, suggesting that it should be perfectly acceptable to “ convince the public that you are right. ”
Lindell, meanwhile, went straight back down the rabbit hole.
‘You are absolutely right. With this particular thing going on now, I did everything I could to find the machine fraud and we found it, we have the evidence, ”Lindell exclaimed. So all these outlets are calling me from The Washington Post, New York Times, every outlet in the country, they say ‘Mike Lindell, there is no evidence and he is making fraudulent statements.’ No, I have the proof and I challenge people to set it up! “
“I dare Dominion to sue me because it would come out faster,” he added. ‘They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want that! “
“No, they don’t,” Carlson muttered in response.
“They don’t make conspiracy theories go away by doing that,” he continued, before adding, “You don’t make people calm and reasonable and moderate by censoring them, you make them crazier. Of course!”
In recent weeks, Dominion and Smartmatic – another voting machine company lumped in electoral fraud – have made legal threats to a number of right-wing media and Trumpworld figures, including Fox News. Dominion, meanwhile, has already filed multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuits against Trumpist attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for promoting unfounded fraud claims about the company.