Touting Trump conspiracies, MyPillow CEO forms divides
For the past four years, most American corporations have tried to avoid the appearance of partisanship while also distancing themselves from the inflammatory rhetoric of former President Donald Trump and his supporters, walking a tightrope to keep customers and employees happy.
It has been a different story for MyPillow. Mike Lindell, the company’s founder and chief executive, has remained one of Trump’s most fervent supporters. His sustained peddling of debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud got him barred from Twitter on Monday night. With retailers like Kohl’s and other major companies cutting ties with the privately held manufacturer, Lindell has managed to make his pillows partisan.
“It goes to my money, you know where my money’s going,” Lindell said in an interview this month with a pro-Trump online channel called Right Side Broadcasting Network, offering a discount code for viewers to use on MyPillow’s website.
Lindell, a former crack cocaine and gambling addict, founded the company after the idea for MyPillow came to him in a dream in 2004, according to his memoir. He is now a devout Christian and credits God with aiding his recovery.
MyPillow is based in Chaska, Minnesota, and Lindell said in an interview this week that it employed nearly 2,500 people. Its products — it carries more than 100 — have been widely distributed in national chains, and Lindell’s face is prominently featured in infomercials and boxes carrying its patented pillows.
Politics became a bigger part of Lindell and MyPillow’s identity in the past decade, following the success of its infomercials, which first aired in 2011 and were later a hit on Fox News, according to the memoir and interviews with former employees.
“Politics does not hurt your business,” he said in the interview this week. “I have not alienated anybody except for the bots and the trolls and the hit jobs of the media.”
Lindell said MyPillow’s 2019 revenue exceeded $300 million. MyPillow sells through its website and is carried by retail behemoths like Walmart, Amazon and Costco.
Lindell’s politics entered his company in other ways. On Jan. 6, the day of the riot at the Capitol, MyPillow’s website was accepting a “FightForTrump” discount code that a conservative radio host had promoted on his show. Lindell, who retweeted the discount code that day, claimed without evidence that Twitter employees gained access to his account and retweeted the post in his name.
“We have reviewed the rule violations and consequential enforcement activity and have found no evidence supporting Lindell’s allegations,” a Twitter representative said.
The violence in Washington set in motion a social media campaign against MyPillow and Lindell, spearheaded by the group Sleeping Giants, which was created in 2016 to stop companies from advertising on Breitbart News. The pressure prompted retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl’s, H-E-B, Today’s Shopping Choice in Canada and Wayfair to drop MyPillow products, according to Lindell, who said without providing evidence that the protest was led by “bots and trolls.”
Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s cited the brand’s poor performance for their exits, while Today’s Shopping Choice did not comment beyond confirming the removal. Wayfair declined to comment, and H-E-B did not respond to requests for comment. Zulily said it stopped carrying MyPillow in July.