Fox News stops running commercials for MyPillow over a payment dispute
MINNEAPOLIS >> MyPillow chief executive and prominent election denier Mike Lindell said Friday that Fox News has stopped running his company's commercials, disputing the network's assertion that it is simply because he hasn't paid his bills.
Lindell went public by tweeting that that Fox, which had been one of MyPillow's biggest advertising outlets, had canceled him. He said in his tweet that he didn't know why but that he suspected that the network was trying to silence him. Fox denied that.
Losing Fox was just the latest in a series of financial and legal setbacks for Minnesota-based MyPillow and Lindell, who continues to propagate former President Donald Trump's lies that the 2020 election was MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell speaks to reporters outside federal court in Washington on
June 24, 2021. stolen from him, in part by rigged voting machine systems. Several big-box retailers, including Walmart, have discontinued his products, and lawyers who were defending him against defamation lawsuits by voting machine companies quit.
“As soon as their account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising,” Fox spokeswoman Irena Briganti said.
“They're 100% lying,” Lindell said an interview with The Associated Press.
But he acknowledged that MyPillow owes money to Fox. He put the figure at $7.8 million, but he insisted that the sum is within his credit line with the network. He said MyPillow has long spent an average of $1 million a week to run its ads on Fox. And he said the network had long allowed him 12 weeks of credit until it recently cut that to eight weeks.
“This has nothing to do with money. That's a fact,” Lindell said.
Lindell said he believes Fox wants to silence him “because I want to secure our election platforms.” And he said he suspects the network is sore because his Lindell TV/FrankSpeech online channel recently hired former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, whose debut show on Monday night featured an interview with Trump, who made further false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.