Mike Lindell, the CEO and spokesman for MyPillow, appeared on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show Jan. 18 to talk about his Jan. 15 meeting with President Donald Trump and make a final attempt to “prove” widespread election fraud two days before President Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

Very few would have expected one of the largest supporters of Trump in 2021 would be the MyPillow CEO. But Lindell has become one of the top faces of the #StopTheSteal movement, which claims that voter and election fraud happened on a large scale in the 2020 election and Biden won illegally. 

Read: Trump-Supporting ‘Jericho March’ Ends in Protest, Burning of BLM Banners

“Since Nov. 4, every day, that’s all I do,” he said.

There is no evidence of widespread election fraud.

On the air with Metaxas, Lindell began by claiming he’d received “new, raw data” that confirmed the involvement of other countries like China and Russia in the 2020 election. The data comes from the  far-right website The American Report. The website is currently offline. The article was reposted on World View Weekend Broadcast Network. 

One of the claims this article makes is that China hacked into voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems in order to create fraudulent results.

Lindell has received significant backlash for these persistent claims. The New York Times reports that DVS has sent a letter threatening to sue Lindell for these claims.

“Litigation regarding these issues is imminent,” the letter said.

It additionally called Lindell “a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign.”

Lindell hasn’t shown signs he’ll back off, instead telling Axios that the company should rescind the lawsuit because “we have 100% evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election."

Lindell complained about his tweets being deleted and said that he’d been dropped by at least four vendors.

In an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network on Jan. 18, he said that two of these vendors are Bed, Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s. Bed, Bath & Beyond confirmed in a written statement to the Washington Post that they’ll no longer be selling MyPillow products in part because of they regularly “discontinue a number of underperforming items and brands.”

Metaxas spent a large percentage of airtime discussing that they had been attacked on social media for their views, something that points to the fact that there is “something darker going on,” Metaxas said. 

Read our exclusive: Eric Metaxas Admits to Punching Protester and Offers Context

Lindell additionally claimed that the true results show that 79 million people voted for Trump and 68 million voted for Biden. This is false. The commonly reported election data shows Biden won over 81 million votes and Trump won over 74 million.

Lindell discussed “nine different kinds of cheating that went on,” including ballots that were shipped from China to Georgia and fraudulent ballots from dead citizens. But this information, to Lindell, ensured that Biden would not be allowed to enter office. 

“God’s got his hand in all of this,” he said, and went on to call the information he’d obtained a “miracle.”

Lindell was seen waiting outside the White House last Friday to meet with President Trump. He’s said many times, including on the show Jan. 18, that he was given this data and more from an unnamed lawyer that he was meant to take to the president. 

A Washington Post reporter captured some of the notes carried into this meeting, most of which involve advice on shifting around administration roles. One phrase noted was “Insurrection Act,” leading many to believe Lindell called for Trump to invoke martial law. 

Lindell told The Daily Beast he only received five to 10 minutes with the president, who seemed indifferent to the information and didn’t read through more than four of the six pages of notes he brought. 

“Well, yeah, we all know there was fraud, Mike,” Trump reportedly told Lindell. 

He received an equally nonplussed reaction from White House lawyers, who told him they didn’t believe the information was relevant but said they’d look into it and get back to him. 

After the proof presented to him, Metaxas and Lindell say it’s necessary that Trump act in his final few days in office — though what action he should take wasn’t specified in the half hour interview. 

“The president has an obligation to history not to allow this to happen,” Metaxas said. “He would be dramatically guilty if he did not act.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a recent episode of the show without several ads for MyPillow — which Metaxas said is now the “main sponsor of this program” — and a call for buyers to use the code “ERIC” when they buy a pillow.

Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.

January 6th

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