MILWAUKEE
Mike Lindell arrived at the Republican National Convention with two important goals.
“Save MyPillow,” says his wife, Kendra. And “save the country.”
The situations were dire. America’s voting system was vulnerable, according to Lindell’s unproven and disproven theories. And because he had the audacity to say this publicly — and thereby put himself in legal jeopardy — his pillow company was on the brink.
Advertisem*nt
What would it take to turn these things around? Paper ballots and, well, mattress toppers.
“You got to get everyone in this country on board with getting rid of these voting machines,” he told a roving CNN documentary crew during a whirlwind day of interviews and selfies in Milwaukee.
“We just came out with the most affordable mattress topper in history: $99.98 for the queen, $119.98 for the king,” he told The Washington Post later, echoing a pitch he gave dozens of times throughout the day. “They have 14,000 individual pressure supports that I put in the queen alone. If you sleep bad, you need a different input to get a different output. Kind of like our elections.”
For the past 3½ years, the mustachioed, motor-mouthed salesman hasn’t stopped talking about how the 2020 election was stolen, and it has cost him. He has been sued for defamation by two voting-machine companies; Dominion Voting System wants him to pay $1.3 billion (the equivalent of about 10.8 million mattress toppers, king-size). Those cases are ongoing, and Lindell has denied wrongdoing.
In February, a judge ordered Lindell to pay $5 million (plus interest) to a man who in 2021 accepted Lindell’s challenge to “Prove Mike Wrong” by showing that Lindell’s purported evidence did not actually indicate widespread voter manipulation in the 2020 election. (Lindell has appealed this ruling.)
And Lindell spent millions of dollars on lawyers before they dropped him as a client. And he has fallen behind on rent payments for MyPillow warehouses, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The lawsuits? “Frivolous threats,” Lindell says.
The reports about MyPillow’s possible eviction? “Fake news,” Lindell says.
But he does admit that things are financially tight.
“I’ve got my home and a pickup truck,” he says, estimating that speaking about election security has cost MyPillow around $300 million in revenue. “But I’m not worried about it. I’ve been in the streets with no forks. I’ll survive.”
A former crack addict with a gambling problem, Lindell remains all-in on Donald Trump, behaving as if the MAGA movement is not the root cause of his current troubles but the way out of them.
“I don’t see it as a gamble at all,” Lindell says of tripling down on voter-fraud conspiracies. “If we lose our country, I won’t have a company anyway.”
Lindell calls himself the “second-most attacked man” in the country, behind only his idol, a man who just survived an actual assassination attempt. And like a mini version of Trump, Lindell maintains true celebrity status in corners of the Republican Party. As he wandered the grounds of the RNC, fans thanked him for supporting the “true president” and for providing new levels of neck support.
“Thank you for the important work you are doing,” a sheriff said, stopping to shake Lindell’s hand outside of Fiserv Forum, the basketball arena where delegates had convened to officially nominate Trump as their candidate for president.
“You are our inspiration,” a woman told Lindell, mentioning that she worked for a “grass-roots” election integrity organization.
Advertisem*nt
“Your robes are amazing!” a man with an “alternate delegate” badge shouted. “And I own five of your pillows!”
Because he has been banned from Twitter and Fox News, Lindell has worked to create an alternate media reality. He has hosted conferences and helped support a network of conservative podcasts with his own money and an endless supply of MyPillow promo codes. In 2022, Stephen K. Bannon referred to Lindell as “the most significant financier in all of conservative media.” And even as Lindell is squeezed financially, his companies continue to spend money on conservative causes — helping maintain his role as a powerful figure on the right.
Bob Zeidman, the software forensics expert who debunked several false claims as part of the $5 million “Prove Mike Wrong” contest, says that leaders in Republican politics remain unwilling to speak out against Lindell, even if they privately loathe what he’s up to.
“A lot of them are really happy and congratulate me for what I’ve done,” says Zeidman, a conservative who has done work for No Labels, a group that sought an alternative candidate to both President Biden and Trump. “But they cannot say it publicly because he supports a lot of them, and he’s still in touch with Trump.”
Even after everything Lindell has been through, Zeidman says, “he still has a powerful platform.”
The centerpiece to that platform is FrankSpeech.com, Lindell’s own conservative broadcast network, which had its own booth at the RNC’s media row just outside of the Fiserv Forum. It is here that Lindell’s newest hire — a former mayor named Rudy Giuliani, who has his own financial and legal issues related to Trumpism — spent Monday evening chatting on a live stream with fellow conspiracy theorists. During breaks, a woman wiped sweat off Giuliani’s bald head.
“Sponge bath for the dog,” the former mayor said to her. “Woof woof!”
Despite the legal threats hanging over him, Lindell says he has no intention of shutting up.
“Remember, defamation is you’re doing something maliciously that you know isn’t true, right?” he said. “I know it’s true.”
Advertisem*nt
Cary Joshi, a lawyer who deposed Lindell as part of Zeidman’s attempt to collect on the $5 million contest prize, says she thinks Lindell “truly believes” in what he’s selling.
“I think he has been taken for a ride as much as anyone,” she says. “The problem is it’s so dangerous it has to stop.”
Even some of Lindell’s Republican compatriots would rather he give the election denialism a rest. To get people out to vote, they need to believe that their votes will count. And yet, despite the legal threats, the financial drain and the political liabilities, Lindell appears constitutionally unable to stop talking.
“We need to get something to E-A-T, before we D-I-E,” said a member of Lindell’s entourage, after a long day of nonstop interviews with anyone who would have him.
Forty minutes later, Lindell was still not done talking.
“I asked them to sue me, remember that?” he said to video journalist who asked him whether he worried about the pending lawsuits. “Remember that? They weren’t attacking me anymore so I had to get back in the news, so I said, ‘Sue me Dominion!’ I’ve been sued for billions of dollars by all of the machine companies. … No, I’m not worried about them. I’m trying to save a country!”
Lindell’s wife, Kendra, sat on a nearby bench. She was all-in for her husband, the way he was all-in for Trump. But she was also hungry. She asked him to wrap it up.
His entourage waited for him by the exit. And when he finally walked out the door, the sky flashed with lightning, and it began to rain.
If he’d only stopped talking earlier, maybe they could have avoided the storm.
