Bon voyage, Mike Lindell!
When MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s name resurfaces in the news, it’s a safe bet it’s either about some new conspiratorial rant or more insight into the financial price he’s paying for his maniacal embrace of Donald Trump. Sure enough, Lindell is now making headlines because his pillow empire appears to be headed even further into ruin. We know this because Lindell has been airing MyPillow’s dirty laundry to the public.
Appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast this past week, Lindell accused American Express of taking action that “just cripples” his company, cutting “our credit line from a million dollars down to $100,000.” Having been with American Express for 15 years, Lindell claimed that the credit line slashing was done “out of the blue” with “no reason, no explanation.” After Newsweek reached out to American Express, the company responded that while being unable to comment on specific cases, “American Express does not make customer decisions based on personal views or political affiliations.”
Of course, if American Express were politically motivated, it could have decreased MyPillow’s credit line when Lindell hopped aboard the Trump train seven years ago. American Express also could have done it when, days after the January 6 attack, Lindell (who had attended the pre-attack rally) showed up at the West Wing holding notes about martial law and the Insurrection Act. The truth is that American Express had several opportunities to take adverse action against Lindell if it wanted to do so for political reasons.
Lindell is now trying to reassure his vendors that his business is not collapsing despite the credit line decrease. “I’ve had to meet with each individual vendor and give them peace of mind,” Lindell told Bannon, adding that one vendor threatened to cut his terms from 120 days to 60 days.
The American Express news is just the latest in a string of concerning events for Lindell’s business. Major retailers have stopped carrying MyPillow products thanks to Lindell’s false claims of voter fraud and his multimillion-dollar campaign to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Lindell’s vendors have also been on edge since April, when Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Lindell has a pending $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him by Dominion after he claimed that company rigged the election for President Joe Biden.
As if all that wasn’t enough, Lindell’s vendors got even more nervous in July, when MyPillow’s desperate attempt to unload 856 items at an online auction proved to be a major disappointment. Many items sold for prices that were “dramatically below what comparable products have raised on other websites” or failed to receive a single bid, according to an earlier Newsweek report. As Lindell keeps learning the hard way, the Big Lie is bad for business.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month