Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser. Four years ago, Bloomberg business Week published
Speaker 1: a story about the preposterous business success story of Mike Lindell,
Speaker 1: who went from crack addict to America's pillow king. At
Speaker 1: the time, the CEO of My Pillow had just met
Speaker 1: the newly elected President Trump. Lindell's story has only grown
Speaker 1: wilder since then. One of the most unwavering of Trump loyalists,
Speaker 1: he became a regular on right wing TV and at
Speaker 1: the president's rallies, and when the Trump administration's refusal to
Speaker 1: accept the election results finally crumbled in the days after
Speaker 1: the January six insurrection at the U. S Capital, Lindell
Speaker 1: was one of the last men standing in support. He
Speaker 1: was even photographed exiting the White householding notes that seemed
Speaker 1: to advocate martial law. Lindale's problem seemed to abound, with
Speaker 1: retailers now refusing to carry his pillows and dominion voting
Speaker 1: systems threatening him with a defamation suit. And yet when
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business Week recently spoke with him again, Lindell made
Speaker 1: clear he's nowhere near done trying to convinced the world
Speaker 1: about the supposed election fraud that foiled Trump's reelection, and
Speaker 1: he also had a few things to say about that photograph, vaccines,
Speaker 1: and well Pillow sales. Your data is a powerful competitive advantage,
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Speaker 1: turn that data into successful outcomes across your entire organization.
Speaker 1: Learn more at Spunk dot com, slash everything, never arrest,
Speaker 1: laugh at him, shut his business, sue him. The Pillow
Speaker 1: King won't stop his bizarre quest to prove Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was cheated by Josh Dean. A typical person would be
Speaker 1: mortified to get caught on camera outside the Oval Office
Speaker 1: clutching notes that seem to suggest martial law as a
Speaker 1: way to help overturn a presidential election. For Michael Lindell,
Speaker 1: it was a blessing, possibly the best thing that had
Speaker 1: happened to the founder in chief executive officer of My
Speaker 1: Pillow in the challenging days since Donald Trump, the candidate
Speaker 1: he had fervently supported for the past four odd years,
Speaker 1: lost the election and his job. Oh this is great,
Speaker 1: Lindell told me by phone in late January from an
Speaker 1: undisclosed location that later turned out to be Texas. That
Speaker 1: was a miracle that they took that picture. Now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden all the media is coming to me.
Speaker 1: Nobody came to me before because they didn't want me
Speaker 1: to say the truth. That truth, being Lindell's opinion, evidence
Speaker 1: defying conviction is more like it that the November third
Speaker 1: election of President Joe Biden wasn't a true and fair result. Biden,
Speaker 1: Lindell asserts, is not our real president and is in
Speaker 1: the oval today only because of many injustices, including but
Speaker 1: not limited to, voting by dead people, voting by illegal immigrants,
Speaker 1: voting by miners, late night dumps of ballots printed in
Speaker 1: China and smuggled into Georgia, and the one he really
Speaker 1: can't abide, the hacking of machines from dominion voting systems.
Speaker 1: China did this along with four other countries. He said,
Speaker 1: you had China, a little bit of Russia, you had Iran.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the other two. It might have been Iraq.
Speaker 1: To state the obvious, none of this has been proved anywhere.
Speaker 1: Lindell has been among the most unwavering of Trump loyalists
Speaker 1: since the fall of twenty sixteen, when he met the
Speaker 1: then candidate at a campaign stop in Minnesota, home base
Speaker 1: of My Pillow, and decided this reality TV star was
Speaker 1: the best man to lead America. That encounter occurred just
Speaker 1: a month or two before I met Lindell on assignment
Speaker 1: for this magazine. In fact, the day I arrived at
Speaker 1: my Pillow h Q, Lindell had just returned from a
Speaker 1: Trump election night party in New York and was proudly
Speaker 1: displaying a photo of himself with the President elect and
Speaker 1: Mike Pence taken at that event. As I wrote at
Speaker 1: the time, Lindell looked in the photo like a man
Speaker 1: who couldn't believe his luck. This seemed back then as
Speaker 1: if it would be a quirky footnote in Lindell's colorful biography.
Speaker 1: After all, I had traveled to Minnesota to chronicle his
Speaker 1: bizarre life story, his rise from near death crackhead to
Speaker 1: wildly successful pillow salesman, most famous for starring in his
Speaker 1: own ubiquitous ads. If you watched late night TV or
Speaker 1: listened to the radio, you knew Mike Lindell and his
Speaker 1: magical pillow. But as the story revealed, you probably didn't
Speaker 1: know the half of it. I hadn't thought a lot
Speaker 1: about Lindell in the years since, except when people would
Speaker 1: send me clips about him, often in the context of Trump,
Speaker 1: but his encounter with the future president changed the trajectory
Speaker 1: of his life. He became a regular on right wing
Speaker 1: TV and at Trump rallies, always there with a smile
Speaker 1: as wide as his mustache to salute his man. And
Speaker 1: when the Trump administration's refusal to accept the election result
Speaker 1: finally crumbled in the days after the January six insurrection
Speaker 1: at the US Capitol, Lindell was one of the last
Speaker 1: men standing in support. This made him, in the waning
Speaker 1: days of January, a go to call for journalists looking
Speaker 1: for a final toke on the Trump news crack pipe.
Speaker 1: When I finally reached him at nine pm on the
Speaker 1: day after Biden's inauguration, our talk had been pushed back
Speaker 1: three times because of the volume of calls from reporters.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous the media, Lindell said, having just shoveled down
Speaker 1: his first meal of the day NonStop interviews, podcasts, TV
Speaker 1: shows for four days from morning till night. The latest
Speaker 1: volley of calls had been sparked by another surprise news hit.
Speaker 1: That very day, England's Daily Mail newspaper was reporting the
Speaker 1: end of an unlikely romance between the My Pillow guy
Speaker 1: and actress Jane Krakowski of thirty Rock Fame. I have
Speaker 1: to say it was one of the weirdest and most
Speaker 1: surprising gossip headlines I had ever read. Lindell quickly dismissed
Speaker 1: the rumor of any romance, as has Kurkowski. He called
Speaker 1: it a hit piece about some actress I'd never met
Speaker 1: before in my life. They made it up, so I'm
Speaker 1: suing them. This was no bluff. A day later, Lindell
Speaker 1: hired Charles Harder, defamation lawyer of choice for aggrieved conservatives.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you remember him as the lawyer who helped kill
Speaker 1: Gawker Media to file suit against a notorious gossip rag
Speaker 1: for asserting that he, a single man, had been dating
Speaker 1: an attractive woman who is also single for my evangelical platform.
Speaker 1: That's defamation, Lindell, who says he's a devout Christian, explained,
Speaker 1: and he suspects it was a plant. I think they
Speaker 1: put it out to push the story of me going
Speaker 1: after the dominion machines and after the fraud, because now
Speaker 1: it pushed everything down. This was the crux of it.
Speaker 1: Lindell's assertion is that the story was concocted by enemies
Speaker 1: to push his election fraud allegations further down the results
Speaker 1: pages when people search his name. But Lindell had far
Speaker 1: bigger problems than some arguably flattering gossip. His increasingly loud
Speaker 1: campaign to convince the world about election fraud was blowing
Speaker 1: back on his empire. In early January, eight big box retailers,
Speaker 1: including Coals and bed Bath and Beyond, dropped my pillow
Speaker 1: from their stores. Just barry Mike's company and barry him.
Speaker 1: Lindell snipped, put his employees out in the street, and
Speaker 1: an even bigger danger was looming. Dominion Voting Systems had
Speaker 1: just threatened him with a defamation suit. You have positioned
Speaker 1: yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign,
Speaker 1: The letter said, litigation regarding these issues is imminent. Dominion
Speaker 1: had already sued Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and a couple
Speaker 1: of days after we talked, the company sued Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 1: The letter probably didn't have the effect its drafters hoped for.
Speaker 1: Lindell doubled down. It was like a aafia letter. Lindell
Speaker 1: told me, you have been warned, and I'm going warned
Speaker 1: of what they dropped that letter. Because I met with
Speaker 1: these investigative journalists that found all this evidence. Lindell was
Speaker 1: talking about two writers for a website called The American Report,
Speaker 1: which has a history of trafficking and conspiracy theories. These
Speaker 1: writers claim to have forensic proof, in Lindell's words, of
Speaker 1: Dominion machines being hacked to manipulate results in Biden's favor.
Speaker 1: I told Dominion, I said, sue me, then we get
Speaker 1: the evidence out there. Quicker defamation suits can be devastating.
Speaker 1: A decision in Dominion's favor could destroy my pillow. Lindell
Speaker 1: said he wasn't worried. They don't want to do a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against me because they know we have all the evidence.
Speaker 1: If you do a lawsuit, you have to be deposed,
Speaker 1: you have to have discovery. And I would not have
Speaker 1: gone out there if I wasn't sure. When I saw
Speaker 1: the President, I said, Mr President, I know I only
Speaker 1: have a few minutes, but I'm telling you everything I
Speaker 1: have in this world, every person I know, my business, everything,
Speaker 1: I will put it all on the line if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm all in. I don't care about any lawsuit.
Speaker 1: This is for our country and for humanity. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: have occurred to me in a million years that I'd
Speaker 1: be talking to Mike Lindell about voting machines, or election fraud,
Speaker 1: or really anything other than extensions of the My Pillow line.
Speaker 1: I knew four years ago that this was an unusual man,
Speaker 1: certainly among entrepreneurs who built nine figure businesses. I knew
Speaker 1: he was brash and reactive and completely without guard rails.
Speaker 1: But I certainly never could have imagined that the next
Speaker 1: time we talked he'd be trying to undermine a presidential election.
Speaker 1: Most ceo s are careful by nature. They do everything
Speaker 1: possible to avoid land mines. Lindell just leaps into mine fields,
Speaker 1: and so far he hasn't blown up. His agitation on
Speaker 1: behalf of Trump has actually helped My Pillow, he said,
Speaker 1: though that isn't why he's doing it. Business is up
Speaker 1: so much the last week that we've had to keep
Speaker 1: hiring people. Lindell said. His factories were adding shifts to
Speaker 1: meet the demand from fans of My Pillow and presumably
Speaker 1: the former president, the kinds of consumers who get outraged
Speaker 1: by cancel culture and show their disapproval by buying pillows
Speaker 1: as an act of revenge. We're so busy right now.
Speaker 1: Because of all these attacks. Lindell is used to this dance.
Speaker 1: This wasn't his first bout with bad press, or even
Speaker 1: his first bout with bad press at the White House.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you recall the coronavirus briefing last spring, at which
Speaker 1: Lindell appeared to talk about how my pillow was ramping
Speaker 1: up production of masks to help fill a national shortage.
Speaker 1: Then he went off script. God gave us grace on
Speaker 1: November eight to change the course we were on, Lindell said,
Speaker 1: a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage
Speaker 1: you to use this time at home to get back
Speaker 1: in the word, read our Bible. I did not know
Speaker 1: he was going to do that. Trump commented, but he's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine and I appreciate it. When I
Speaker 1: did that, our business went up about four fold, Lindell
Speaker 1: told me. But now this last week pushed it up
Speaker 1: to a new level. It just keeps getting busier because
Speaker 1: the public knows that this is all just an attack,
Speaker 1: and they go, why are they attacking him when he's
Speaker 1: trying to tell everyone that there's a machine fraud and
Speaker 1: we should never ever use machines again in an election.
Speaker 1: This is the sole focus of Mike Lindell's life now
Speaker 1: in post Trump America to prove to the world that
Speaker 1: the election was illegitimate and that the main culprit was
Speaker 1: comprised voting machines. Since November fourth, not one waking hour
Speaker 1: have I not been focused on the election fraud, he said.
Speaker 1: I have put in over two million dollars of my
Speaker 1: own money into helping out different people throughout the country,
Speaker 1: supporting them both with resources and my time. So who's
Speaker 1: running my pillow? The company, he said, is in capable hands.
Speaker 1: His son, Darren is at the helm. Lynn Ll said
Speaker 1: that for basically the whole last year he's been away
Speaker 1: from day to day operations of the company he founded.
Speaker 1: When they have problems, they give me a call. Speculation
Speaker 1: had been rampant in Minnesota that Lindell would run for governor.
Speaker 1: He was seriously considering it, but now he had doubts.
Speaker 1: This case against dominion had become a crusade, and if
Speaker 1: he can't win it, he has no interest in running
Speaker 1: for any office. I would never even think of running
Speaker 1: until these machines are never used again anywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: he told me. Lindell was already extremely sure of the fraud,
Speaker 1: but claims that his smoking gun arrived in early January
Speaker 1: when those writers reached him. Also, another guy came to me,
Speaker 1: and he's a mathematic cyber forensic expert. I've never seen
Speaker 1: a genius like that in math, and he validated what
Speaker 1: these other people have. Basically, Lindell's story is this, these
Speaker 1: machines had algorithms built in to count every Biden vote
Speaker 1: as one point two votes and every Trump vote as
Speaker 1: for fifths of one. This would be movable, he insists,
Speaker 1: but no one was allowed into those machines. That said,
Speaker 1: he claims that if you were able to fix the
Speaker 1: algorithms to deliver a true result, the actual count was
Speaker 1: seventy nine million, eight hundred thousand for Donald Trump sixty
Speaker 1: eight million, two hundred thousand for Biden. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: count all the other stuff. You had eight thousand dead
Speaker 1: people that voted, You had the six thousand miners, twelve
Speaker 1: thousand people that didn't live in Georgia that voted, six
Speaker 1: thousand people that voted twice. Again, none of this has
Speaker 1: been proved. Lindell makes plenty of assertions like this about
Speaker 1: Georgia and Arizona and Nevada and Pennsylvania and even about
Speaker 1: his home state Minnesota, where no one has contested the
Speaker 1: result except Mike Lindell. I would encourage any journalist who
Speaker 1: plans to discuss this subject with Lindell to clear the calendar.
Speaker 1: You're going to want some time. The various threads get confusing,
Speaker 1: and when Lindell talks about them, he does so furiously.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to take notes, let alone get questions in.
Speaker 1: Not because Lindell won't answer them. The man is an
Speaker 1: open book, but because having this discussion is like standing
Speaker 1: in front of a fire hose. It's overwhelming, and the
Speaker 1: sheer mania of it all blurs the seriousness of what
Speaker 1: he's proposing. That we remove a sitting president and reinstalled
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It's the biggest heist in the history of
Speaker 1: the world and the biggest crime against humanity, because these
Speaker 1: are communists that did this, Lindell said. Hold on a second,
Speaker 1: I said, what about the courts. At last count, Trump's
Speaker 1: lawyers had won just one of sixty two legal challenges,
Speaker 1: some of them in front of Trump appointed judges. These judges,
Speaker 1: Lindell said, refuse to look at the real evidence. They
Speaker 1: just couldn't handle the truth. I'll tell you this when
Speaker 1: this evidence gets before the Supreme Court, he said, referring
Speaker 1: to the forensic cyber evidence from the American report, When
Speaker 1: those nine justices if they look at it, because Chief
Speaker 1: Justice John Roberts is compromised, but if they do look
Speaker 1: at it, it is so blatant that they're all nine
Speaker 1: going to raise their hand and go, wow, we were
Speaker 1: attacked by China and all this. The media, Lindell said,
Speaker 1: just won't show this evidence, and social media sites won't either.
Speaker 1: Twitter had been flagging Lindell's tweets for weeks and shut
Speaker 1: down his account finally on January, So it's up to him.
Speaker 1: They're trying to suppress this, but it will come out.
Speaker 1: You can't keep this down. And I got a big mouth.
Speaker 1: You do like to talk, I replied, I'm just so excited. Finally,
Speaker 1: I brought the conversation back to the White House photo.
Speaker 1: If the evidence is so clear, then why on the
Speaker 1: day that infamous martial law shot was taken did then
Speaker 1: President Trump not jump at it. First, Lindell would like
Speaker 1: to correct the record the martial law thing. He says
Speaker 1: that wasn't him. A friend, a lawyer he wouldn't name,
Speaker 1: gave him some papers to give to Trump. Those papers,
Speaker 1: which he says he hadn't even read, included the martial
Speaker 1: law thing, plus a note about a new CIA boss.
Speaker 1: Lindell's contribution was his new evidence boiled down to four pages.
Speaker 1: So I go in there with these four pages, and
Speaker 1: I go, Mr President, this is the smoking gun. The
Speaker 1: machine fraud is real. I have done my own tests.
Speaker 1: I said, I would bet everything I have in this
Speaker 1: world that this is accurate. He'd been promised only five minutes,
Speaker 1: and when that was up, a stafford took him upstairs
Speaker 1: to the lawyers to show them the papers. The lawyers
Speaker 1: took the papers, disappeared for a few minutes, and then
Speaker 1: sent Lindell back downstairs with the papers to wait again.
Speaker 1: They said it will be about ten minutes. Shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: someone clarified it would actually be two hours or possibly more.
Speaker 1: Lindell got the hint and was ruffled. I said, this
Speaker 1: is a matter of national security. I'm going to wait
Speaker 1: here until the President says that I'm supposed to go.
Speaker 1: That's when I went outside to make a phone call
Speaker 1: and the picture was taken. Finally, he was shown back
Speaker 1: inside to see some underling lawyers who listened for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: It was like talking to the wall. When he asked
Speaker 1: them could he see the president to discuss this evidence,
Speaker 1: there would be no additional time, so I left. And
Speaker 1: then about two hours later I find out that that
Speaker 1: guy with the telescopic lens took that thing where it
Speaker 1: says insurrection or martial law. So then it's just Mike
Speaker 1: Lindell wants martial law for one thing. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what all it entails for another thing that wasn't
Speaker 1: my sheet. On the plus side, the photo sparked the
Speaker 1: media circus that's still chucking along. I'm finding out every
Speaker 1: media person has my phone number. And when the Dominion
Speaker 1: letter hit the news, they just kept calling. You tell
Speaker 1: Dominion to get this lawsuit started, Lindell said. He told them,
Speaker 1: I welcome that I get to show my side to
Speaker 1: the public. Let's do it National TV. The conviction with
Speaker 1: which Lindell stands behind the machine fraud is the same
Speaker 1: conviction with which he stands behind the botanical extract oleandren
Speaker 1: which he pedals as a preventer of COVID nineteen infections,
Speaker 1: and the same conviction with which he stands behind the
Speaker 1: former president. I'm not going to go jeopardize my reputation,
Speaker 1: my word. If I'm only sure, if I would have
Speaker 1: never met Donald Trump, I wouldn't have went all in.
Speaker 1: I might have went in. Then I met him. I'm going, well,
Speaker 1: this is it. I believe in it. I believe in him,
Speaker 1: and I'm going all in. But what I asked him,
Speaker 1: if this fails, what if no one ever believes him,
Speaker 1: or worse, if he's sued and loses, At what point
Speaker 1: would Mike Lindell decide he's had enough. I'll never quit,
Speaker 1: he replied, So if I have to go door to
Speaker 1: door and show people, I will get it out there.
Speaker 1: I'm very optimistic and I'm very persistent, Josh, and it's
Speaker 1: going to reveal itself and I'm not backing down ever.
Speaker 1: He's also, by the way, not getting the COVID vaccine.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I've heard there are horrific things
Speaker 1: in there. This is a joke. And then they introduce
Speaker 1: a new virus anyway, They'll just keep introducing new ones anyway,
Speaker 1: He said, he has his own cure. I take my
Speaker 1: oleander every day. I've been in crowds, my employees that
Speaker 1: take it, thousands of people taking this. You don't get it,
Speaker 1: and if you do get it, you're sick for two
Speaker 1: days at the most. So why would I take it
Speaker 1: when the cure has been here? Look it up on
Speaker 1: your online there, get yourself some. I'll ship you some.
Speaker 1: Then you don't have to take anything. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't need to take this vaccine. It's all big farmer crap. Maybe, so,
Speaker 1: I replied, but I'm getting the shot. Lindell took that in.
Speaker 1: You go ahead, and I'll pray for you that you're
Speaker 1: the one that doesn't die. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: stories in the magazine this week. Find more in the
Speaker 1: Karnis Show of Bloomberg Business Week. It is on newsstands, online,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot Com, and on the Bloomberg terminal. And be
Speaker 1: sure to listen to to our Bloomberg Business Week radio show.
Speaker 1: It airs live Monday through Friday at two pm Moll
Speaker 1: Street Time on Bloomberg Radio with myself and Tim Stanovic
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg Quicktake. Watch us too in our daily broadcast
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News. I'm Carol Masser.
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