You might want to lie down for this one.
MyPillow CEO and Trump loyalist Mike Lindell appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night to spool off a series of unhinged conspiracy theories aimed at Twitter, in the wake of the permanent suspension of his account from the social media platform.
Lindell, a major Republican donor who funneled financial support into many of Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories by backing lawsuits that sought to overturn Trump’s electoral loss last year, has been relentless in advancing wildly false claims to explain away Trump’s defeat — even after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month that turned deadly.
This is sheer lunacy from the MyPillow guy. If you of your family members ranted like this you’d be worried about them. pic.twitter.com/ppPzHug0An
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 27, 2021
Last week, the MyPillow executive had even defended the efforts by Trump supporters, calling their attempts to lay siege on the Capitol “very peaceful” and blaming violence that left five people, including a Capitol Police officer, dead the work of “undercover Antifa dressed as Trump people,” according to The New York Times.
In spite of his long history of spewing claims devoid of fact, the pillow executive was warmly welcomed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night. Carlson lauded MyPillow as “one of our biggest sponsors” — likely one of the primary reasons for providing Lindell such a platform for his distorted views — before directing furor onto Twitter for its decision to permanently suspend Lindell’s account for violating its policies on election misinformation.
“For the crime of having different opinions, Mike Lindell has been banned from Twitter,” Carlson said.
“It seems pretty clear they’re sending a message,” the Fox News host added. “People the public recognizes cannot step out of line because you might convince others to do the same.”
But before he could even attempt to reinforce Carlson’s “cancel culture” message, the interview rapidly spun out into a bizarre look inside Lindell’s arsenal of outlandish and unfounded claims.
Lindell insisted, for example, that after a temporary suspension earlier this month, an unnamed person or group at Twitter was actually secretly running his account for two weeks.
“I just couldn’t do anything and they were running my Twitter like they were me,” he said.
Lindell suggested that friends had commented on suspicious activity on his Twitter account, which prompted him to try to “take it down.”
“I got a thing from Germany saying these are Twitter rules and you cannot do this,” Lindell said, adding: “So they ran my Twitter for about 14 days… 15 days.”
Lindell further insisted that after Dominion threatened legal action over his efforts to undermine the legitimacy of their voting machines, “they hired hit groups and bots and trolls and went after all my vendors and box stores to cancel me out.”
Carlson later chimed in to chastise the press after his exasperated guest claimed he had damaging evidence about the voting software that had been ignored by a group of legacy media publications who dismissed him out of pocket.
“They’re not making conspiracy theories go away by doing that,” Carlson said, adding: “You don’t make people calm down and get reasonable and moderate by censoring them, you make them way crazier. Of course!”
