Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow and dramatis persona in the Big Lie saga with seemingly no end, said on Wednesday that defending his advocacy for Trump’s claims is causing his company to go broke.
Lindell told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that he’s had trouble sustaining his company while he’s embroiled in defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and Smartmatic Corp.
“The machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow,” Lindell said on Bannon’s show. He claimed to have taken out three separate loans last year, and complained about “everyone” defending the voting machine companies while they “attack” MyPillow.
Back in January, he also told a local TV news station that the company had lost millions of dollars in retailers.
“Now let me tell you the facts about MyPillow,” he said then. “When I tried to get this out to the people, MyPillow lost $100 million in retailers. We are not up 30–40% — we are down. We are down. I had to borrow money.”
But mere hours after his remarks to Bannon Wednesday, he told the Daily Beast that MyPillow is in great shape.
“I invented MyPillow2.0 and it is doing great!” he told the news outlet Wednesday night. He also claimed that over half of the loans he had taken out had been paid back.
He declined to tell the Daily Beast whether his company was still losing money. “MyPillow had to spend millions on lawsuits and the last 2 years lost 30 box stores and shopping channels,” he said. “All because their CEO wants to get rid of electronic voting machines and help a save our country!”
Lindell has spent the years since the 2020 election promoting debunked conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud and collaborating with QAnon podcasts and web shows, which hawk his products to their election-denying audiences. A Media Matters investigation found that MyPillow sold its products using special discount codes for at least 17 QAnon-affiliated figures and shows, offering them a cut of the profits made through the sale.
Dominion is currently suing the entrepreneur for $1.3 billion in damages. Still, the MyPillow CEO has offered his financial resources to local right-wing election officials if they run into legal challenges for ditching Dominion’s voting machines.
“I will not stop until we fix our election platforms and get rid of voting machines,” he told the Daily Beast.
