Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow and dramatis personae in the seemingly endless Big Lie saga, said Wednesday that standing up for his defense of Trump’s claims is bankrupting his company.
Lindell told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that he has struggled to maintain his company while embroiled in defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and Smartmatic Corp.
“The machine companies keep suing us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million on MyPillow,” Lindell said. saying on the Bannon show. He claimed to have obtained three separate loans in the past year and complained that “everyone” defends voting machine companies while “attacking” MyPillow.
Back in January, hey said a local television News-thread station that the company had lost millions of dollars on retailers.
“Now let me tell you the facts about MyPillow,” he said then. “When I tried to get this out to people, MyPillow lost $100 million in retail. We don’t go up 30-40%, we go down. we’re down. I had to borrow money.”
But within hours of his comments to Bannon on Wednesday, he said the Daily Beast that MyPillow is in great shape.
“I invented MyPillow2.0 and it’s doing great!” he told the News-thread outlet on Wednesday night. He also claimed that more than half of the loans he had taken out had been repaid.
He refused to tell the Daily Beast if his company was still losing money. “MyPillow had to spend millions in lawsuits and in the last 2 years it lost 30 stores and shopping channels,” he said. “All because your CEO wants to get rid of electronic voting machines and help save our country!”
Lindell has spent the years since the 2020 election promoting debunked conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud and collaborating with QAnon podcasts and web shows, which promote their products to their election-denying audiences. A Media Matters investigation found that MyPillow was selling its products using special discount codes to at least 17 QAnon affiliated figures and programsoffering them a part of the profits obtained through the sale.
Dominion is currently suing the businessman for $1.3 billion in damage. Still, the CEO of MyPillow has offered his financial resources to right-wing local election officials if they face legal challenges over dumping Dominion’s voting machines.
“I won’t stop until we fix our polling platforms and get rid of the voting machines,” he told the Daily Beast.
