MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell doesn’t seem too keen on his portrayal in a recent lawsuit as an election falsehoods profiteer, so he wants to make sure Americans know that he expects to lose $65 million in revenue this year, after a host of retailers dropped his products from stores over election conspiracy theories he parroted.
During an interview with Insider published Monday, Lindell said that a decision by well-known retailers including Kohl’s and Bed Bath & Beyond to stop carrying his products over his false election claims would hurt his pockets.
“Those stores combined did $65 million in business last year,” Lindell said. “And now I won’t have them this year, or any year. They’re done.”
The claimed losses come after the CEO and his company were sued for $1.3 billion in damages by Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company that has been at the center of debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud.
The 115-page lawsuit accuses the pillow executive of leveraging conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines in an effort to boost sales for his company, using conspiratorial phrases as discount codes and spending millions of dollars on advertisements with Trump-aligned media outlets like Fox News and Newsmax.
In its lawsuit, Dominion suggests that Lindell used conspiracy theories as a platform for selling more pillows.
“After hitting the jackpot with Donald Trump’s endorsement for MyPillow and after a million-dollar bet on Fox News ads had paid out handsome returns, Michael Lindell exploited another chance to boost sales: marketing MyPillow to people who would tune in and attend rallies to hear Lindell tell the ‘Big Lie’ that Dominion had stolen the 2020 election,” the complaint said.
During his interview with Insider, Lindell claimed that retailers refusing his products would likely cause long-term damage to the company’s sales.
“When I’m boycotted, people tend to buy more pillows — at least in the short term,” Lindell told Insider. “I always get a little lift for a couple of days when they attack the company. But now this time is different.”
Lindell appeared eager to paint himself as a hero facing financial losses for his convictions in a flimsy counter-narrative to Dominion’s allegations that he enriched himself on election lies.
“I’m not a stupid person. I have a huge company that I built from scratch. I’m an ex-addict, and I’m not going to back down from some big billion-dollar company that’s trying to steal our country,” Lindell told Insider.
“All I want is this election now. I don’t care how much money it costs me,” he added.
