The MyPillow Guy was def just trying to tend to the weary and spiritually malnourished. It was def not a stunt, and how dare you insinuate such a thing.
The details: The MyPillow CEO and Big Lie Guy Mike Lindell, a videographer, an American truck driver and a truck full of “10,000 pillows” were reportedly stopped and denied entry to Canada last night after attempting to cross the Port Huron-Sarnia border into Ottawa. According to the conservative Canadian news outlet The National Post, Lindell was attempting to deliver a bunch of “pillows and Bibles” to anti-vax trucker protesters in Ottawa, but was turned away because he himself is not fully vaccinated and he didn’t have proof of a negative PCR COVID-19 test with him at the time.
There are a few telling details here to unpack. The report is based on information provided to the conservative National Post by an anonymous “senior government source” who told the publication that Lindell was one of “dozens” of Americans who have been turned away at the border in recent weeks, attempting to enter the country to participate in the “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations.
Lindell’s pillow pilgrimage was also being fully documented by the far-right news outlet, Right Side Broadcasting Network. After the truck was stopped, Right Side posted a “statement” to Twitter announcing their crew had been “temporarily detained” upon trying to enter Canada, due to the “COVID-19 protocols.”
Lindell himself also posted a video to his weird social media website Frank Speech shortly after the incident, according to The National Post, ranting about being denied entry and about how his truck driver had been working on getting some permit to enter the country.
The trucker “has been waiting on this permit that they made up out of the blue, this new permit thing,” he reportedly said. I tried to Google around to figure out what he is talking about, to see if there is, in fact, some type of new permit that will help you evade the law to get into Canada. I didn’t find an answer (But, please, let me know if I’m wrong).
Unless you meet certain other requirements (like having a negative COVID test and submitting all necessary COVID-19 information to the ArriveCAN site before reaching the border), you have to have documentation that you became fully vaccinated at least 14 days prior to arrival at the border. At least initially, that rule did not apply to truckers transporting goods between the U.S. and Canada, but the Canadian government changed that rule last month, prompting the outrage behind this entire mess.
And it’s the exact mess that Lindell claimed he was entering the country to support. A reasonable conclusion to draw is that Lindell and the rest of the team knew full-well that not being fully vaccinated and not having a negative PCR test would land them in the very position they were in last night.
But why not bring a film crew along to document the experience.
The Best Of TPM Today
Here’s what you should read this evening:
Did Trump Flush More Than Records Down The Toilet? | Talking Points Memo
Biden Shoots Down Trump’s Privilege Claim Over WH Visitor Logs
TPM Prime: Let’s Take A Look At What Pro-Convoy Conservatives Had To Say About BLM Traffic Blocks, Shall We?
Texas Republicans’ Voting Law Unleashes Chaos Before Primary
From TPM Cafe: Sandy Hook Settlement Won’t Prompt A Flood Of Lawsuits Against Gun-Makers
And: The RNC’s Complicity In Trump’s Attacks On Democracy | Talking Points Memo
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Durham Accused Of Stoking Trumpy Conspiracy Theories In Blistering Counterattack By Target Of His Probe — Josh Kovensky
What We Are Reading
What an Analysis of 2,000 Shootings Tells Us About How to End Gun Violence — Jeff Wise
Ryan Zinke broke ethics rules while leading Trump’s Interior Dept., watchdog finds — Anna Phillips and Lisa Rein
What to Expect From the COVID Variants to Come — John Pfaff