A day after being kicked out of Twitter for repeatedly sharing election misinformation, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell appeared Tuesday night on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s program for an extremely friendly interview and proceeded to Shoot strange conspiracies left and right.
Lindell has been one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest proponents, providing financial support for many of the pro-Trump demands that sought to overthrow President Joe Biden’s victory. After the insurrectionary uprising instigated by Trump, Lindell claimed the attack was “very peaceful” and blamed the violence on “Trump’s disguised covert antifa.”
The pillow seller has continued to push the discredited theory that millions of Trump votes were turned upside down in Biden due to a disastrous international conspiracy involving the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez and corrupt voting software, opening up to the legal threats of Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell, who says he “welcomes” a lawsuit, also personally visited the White House during Trump’s last days in office to sell him his latest theory of election fraud. (White House attorneys dismissed their claims.)
Carlson, whose show is based primarily on MyPillow ads after an exodus of sponsors, welcomed Lindell Tuesday night praising the show’s main benefactor.
“He’s one of our biggest sponsors and we’re grateful for that,” Carlson said. “He is sponsoring freedom of expression. But, of course, those responsible for orthodoxy are not impressed, they get angry. Mike Lindell has been banned from Twitter for his views. “
Following its ban on Lindell, Twitter said Lindell was “permanently suspended due to repeated violations of our civic integrity policy.” The new policy was enacted after the insurgency and notes that anyone who continuously shares electoral misinformation can be banned.
After pointing out that several merchants have also stopped transporting Lindell products after their conspiracy, Carlson, recently defended by QAnon conspirators, painted the founder of MyPillow as a freedom of expression warrior and a victim of censorship.
“It seems pretty clear that they send a message,” the Fox host said. “People you recognize the public can’t get off the line because you can convince others to do the same. Do you take another message or do you think that’s why they do this to you?”
From there, Lindell quickly turned the interview into an opportunity to make extravagant, unfounded claims, while Carlson sat in large part and let go of his biggest sponsor in town.
Noting that he was initially suspended by Twitter earlier this month for tweeting about election fraud, Lindell then insisted that Twitter “didn’t finish it” and that someone from the social media company was running his account during two weeks.
“I just couldn’t do anything and they ran my Twitter like I did,” he continued. “My friends go there, you won’t tweet much, and when you do, I said I won’t, so I try to remove it and I get something from Germany that says these are Twitter rules and you can’t do, so they ran my Twitter for 14 or 15 days. “
Lindell then stated, without any evidence, that after Dominion threatened him with a lawsuit for his false claims to voting software, “they hired affected groups, bots and trolls and chased all my vendors and boxes. to cancel me ”.
While not promoting or supporting Lindell’s statements, Carlson framed MyPillow’s boss conspiracies as part of normal speech, suggesting that it should be totally acceptable to “convince the audience you’re right.”
Meanwhile, Lindell went back down the rabbit hole.
“You are absolutely right. With this particular thing happening now, I’ve been trying to find the machine fraud and we’ve found it, we have the evidence, “Lindell exclaimed.” So they call me all these outlets. The Washington Post, New York News, at all outlets in the country, go “Mike Lindell, no evidence and makes fraudulent statements.” No, I have the proofs and I dare with people to put them on! ”
“I dare Dominion to sue me because I would come out faster,” he added. “They do not want to talk about it. They don’t want it! ”
“No, they don’t,” Carlson murmured in response.
“They don’t make conspiracy theories disappear by doing this,” he continued, before adding, “You don’t make people calm down and become reasonable and moderate by censoring them, you make them crazier. Of course!”
In recent weeks, Dominion and Smartmatic – another voting machine company that fell into election fraud conspiracies – have issued legal threats to various right-wing media and Trumpworld figures, including Fox News. Meanwhile, Dominion has already filed billions of dollars in defamation lawsuits against Trumpist attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for promoting unfounded fraud claims against the company.