A day after he was kicked out of Twitter for repeatedly sharing the disinformation of the election, Mike Lindell, Mike’s CEO, appeared on Tuesday night’s program of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson presenter for an extremely sympathetic interview.
Lindell was one of former President Donald Trump’s biggest reinforcers, and supported financially with many of the pro-Trump lawsuits trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Following the uprising instigated by Trump, Lindell claims the attack was ‘very peaceful’ and blamed ‘secret antifa dressed like Trump people’.
The pillow seller continued to push the unobstructed theory that millions of Trump votes had been transferred to Biden due to a heinous international conspiracy involving the dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and corrupt system software, which opened him up to legal threats from 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 on his latest election fraud theory. (White House lawyers rejected his claims.)
Carlson, whose show is largely backed by MyPillow ads after an outpouring of sponsors, welcomed Lindell Tuesday night by praising the program’s biggest benefactor.
“He’s one of our biggest sponsors, and we’m grateful for that,” Carlson said. “He guarantees freedom of speech. But the perpetrators of orthodoxy are obviously not impressed, they are furious. Mike Lindell was banned on Twitter for the crime of having different opinions. ”
Following the ban on Lindell, Twitter said Lindell was “permanently suspended due to repeated violations of our civil integrity policies.” The new policy was instituted after the uprising and notes that anyone who constantly shares misinformation can be banned.
After noticing that a number of retailers also no longer carried Lindell’s products after his conspiracy, Carlson, who did not even stand by QAnon conspirators, painted the MyPillow founder as a freedom of speech and the victim of censorship.
“It seems pretty clear they’re sending a message,” the Fox host said. ‘People who recognize the public cannot step outside the line because you can convince others to do the same. Do you take another message or do you think that’s why they’re doing it to you? ‘
From there, Lindell quickly turned the interview into an opportunity to make strange and unfounded claims, while Carlson largely sat by it and let his biggest sponsor go to town.
Lindell noted that he was suspended by Twitter earlier this month for tweeting about election fraud, insisting that Twitter not “take it down completely” and that someone at the social media company actually runs his account for two weeks.
“I just could not do anything and they managed my Twitter like I did,” he continued. ‘My friends go, you do not tweet much, and if you do, I said I do not, so I try to take it down and I got something from Germany that says it’s Twitter rules and that you can not do that, so they managed my Twitter for 14 or 15 days. ”
Lindell then claims – without a shred of evidence – that after Dominion threatened him with a lawsuit because of his fake system software, they hired ‘hit groups and bots and trolls’ and went after all my vendors and checkout shops to cancel me. ‘
Carlson did not promote or endorse Lindell’s remarks, but Carlson compiled the conspiracy of the MyPillow principal as part of the normal discourse and suggested that it should be perfectly acceptable to ‘convince the audience that you are right’.
Lindell, meanwhile, is right back in the rabbit hole.
“You’re exactly right. “With this particular thing going on right now, I’re trying my best to track down the machine fraud, and we’ve found that we have the evidence,” Lindell exclaimed. “So all these stores call me from The Washington Post, New York Times“Mike Lindell, there is no evidence and he is making fraudulent statements.” No, I have the evidence and I dare people to wear it! ‘
“I dare Dominion to sue me because it will come out faster,” he added. “They do not want to talk about it. They do not want it! ”
“No, they do not,” Carlson muttered in reply.
“They do not make conspiracy theories disappear by doing so,” he continued before adding, “You do not let people calm down and become reasonable and moderate by censoring them, you drive them crazy. Natural!”
Over the past few weeks, Dominion and Smartmatic – another voting machine company conspired with election fraud conspiracies – have issued legal threats to a number of right-wing media and Trumpworld figures, including Fox News. Dominion, meanwhile, has already filed 500 million defamation lawsuits against Trumpist attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for advancing unfounded fraud claims against the company.