For months after then-President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump spent months peddling lies that Democrats somehow orchestrated widespread election fraud to deliver Biden a false victory.
At every turn—from state certification of votes to the casting of electoral ballots to the national certification of the election by Congress—Trump insisted the election had been stolen from him.
Meanwhile, his cronies scrambled to invent evidence and sow suspicion that would vindicate Trump's lies to his supporters. A key focus of this effort was Dominion Voting Systems, an election software company that Trump's allies claimed worked with Democrats to switch millions of Trump votes to Biden votes.
Dominion has since sued a number of people and entities for parroting these lies to a national audience, endangering its employees and credibility. The company sued Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for $1.3 billion and threatened right-wing purveyors of the conspiracy theory—like Newsmax and Fox News—with litigation if they didn't correct their claims on air.
But pillow salesman Mike Lindell of the MyPillow company—a prominent supporter of Trump and frequent purveyor of his conspiracy theories—seems unfazed by Dominion's threats. A letter from the company to Lindell earlier this month warned that litigation was "imminent" if he didn't stop peddling false information about its integrity.
Lindell welcomed the suit, claiming it would give him the chance to debut irrefutable evidence of the supposed corruption at the company. The MyPillow CEO continued to blare his delusions in Fox News' primetime opinion shows.
This week, Lindell attempted to do the same on the far-right Newsmax network, but it didn't go according to plan.
Watch below.
Lindell appeared on the network to bolster Republican claims that so-called "cancel culture" had gone too far, using the recent suspension of his Twitter account as evidence.
But the pillow peddler had other ideas, beginning the segment with:
"Well, first mine was taken down because we have all the election problem with these Dominion machines, we have 100 percent proof and then I, when they took it down—"
"Mike? Mike? Mike, thank you very much," host Bob Sellers interrupted. "Mike, Mike, you're talking about machines that we at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations."
As Lindell continued to parrot the false allegations, his mic was lowered and Sellers read a prepared statement:
"We just want to let people know that there's nothing substantive that we've seen, and let me read you something there — while there [was] some clear evidence of some cases of vote fraud and election irregularities, the election results in every state were certified, and Newsmax accepts the results as legal and final. The courts have also supported that view."
But Lindell continued to make the baseless claims anyway, prompting Sellers to say:
"Can I ask our producers, can we get out of here please? I don't want to have to keep going over this."
The scene erupted into chaos and Sellers eventually walked off the set.
The erratic segment was met with mockery across the internet.
The irony that Newsmax wanted to spend a segment decrying "cancel culture" only to "cancel" its own guest wasn't lost on anyone.
Lindell claimed he would come out on Friday with proof of malpractice at Dominion—but if history is any indication, the so-called evidence will likely be false and bordering on completely incoherent.
@annewheaton/Threads
@richardadlof/Threads
@mikeisaphreek/Threads
@daisymouze/Threads