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Authoritarian Trumpism got a little more zany on Thursday when Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy known for his antics trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, announced he was running for governor of Minnesota. If he wins the GOP primary, he’ll face off against Gov. Tim Walz.
This was an exciting development for anyone who enjoys how the movement to destabilize American democracy has become populated by the world’s least serious people. Kash Patel, a certified conspiracy theory kook, now runs the FBI with the lib-owning podcaster Dan Bongino by his side; Laura Loomer, a fan of declaring major events to be false flags, has the president’s ear; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a committed anti-vaxxer who once dumped a bear carcass in Central Park, leads our nation’s health policies. These are all committed peddlers of nonsense, but none has committed quite so fully, with so little regard for his or her personal reputation, as Lindell.
Most people who paid attention to the fight over the 2020 election will recall some of Lindell’s work: He sponsored a bus tour to bring warm bodies into the capital for the protests and set up other “Stop the Steal” events; financially backed legal efforts to challenge the election results; publicized the claim that Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had rigged the election; and produced a documentary that purported to prove, once and for all, that the election had been rigged. Lindell was relentless in these efforts; he came on countless right-wing shows as an “expert voice” on election malfeasance. (These appearances often doubled as ads for his pillows.) He held a three-day “Cyber Symposium” in which he vowed he would produce “irrefutable evidence” of election fraud. He made a pitch, the details of which were discovered in a zoomed-in photograph, to Donald Trump to stop Joe Biden’s inauguration by imposing martial law. And he ended up millions of dollars in debt from all these efforts—and from the successful lawsuits Dominion brought against him.
But while these were his most notable ventures, given that they were core to the movement to overturn a democratic election, they do not really give you a sense of the sheer absurdity of Lindell as a character. His true, bungling nature—something that’ll likely be on display as a gubernatorial candidate—shines through in the smaller moments.
Here are some, but certainly not all, of the top hits.
In 2020, he tried to convince Trump to promote the use of “oleandrin” as a miracle cure for COVID. Oleandrin comes from Nerium oleander, a shrub that is deadly to humans; scientists warned the New York Times that the compound was not known to be safe. (Lindell had a financial stake in the company that produced oleandrin.) He also baselessly claimed his pillows could cure insomnia and sleep apnea.
In November 2021, as reported by Vice, he led a call with the “patriot wing” jail block in which many Jan. 6 insurrectionists were held—in order to join them in song. Specifically, he and about 200 others sang the national anthem, with the insurrectionists’ vocals piped in.
During the 2021 “Cyber Symposium,” he announced a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge,” which would give $5 million to anyone who could prove China did not interfere in the 2020 election. An arbitration panel later ordered Lindell to pay the reward to a software developer in Las Vegas when the panel had found the engineer had, in fact, proven Mike wrong. Lindell had to fight the ruling in court, only managing to hold onto the money after a lengthy appeals process.
In general, Lindell’s legal adventures have been bumpy. At one point his lawyers got into trouble for submitting briefs filled with A.I. hallucinations.
In 2024, Lindell went “undercover” at the Democratic National Convention by shaving off his mustache and wearing sunglasses and a hat. He got into an argument with a 12-year-old influencer and was quickly identified.
Lindell made two appearances on Jimmy Kimmel’s show to defend his election fraud claims. He made his second appearance from inside a claw machine. In that episode, Kimmel described Lindell as what would happen if “Ted Lasso was on the FBI watch list.”
Unfortunately, the Kimmel appearance, and other similarly comedic incidents, have served to make him seem affable or even in on the joke. But Lindell appears to be a true believer and has only ever been dead serious about assaulting the integrity of our political system. Lest we forget the extreme nature of his project, Lindell has also worked with and taken smiling selfies with white nationalists.
Just because Lindell has been a consistently ridiculous man does not mean we should not take his candidacy seriously. Yes, he repeatedly proclaimed himself a shoo-in to win the Republican National Committee chair, only to earn just four votes. Yes, he peddles ridiculous wares on his online store, such as coconut-powered teeth whiteners, “MyCross” necklaces, and BleedClot™ (for pets) and BleedStop™ (for humans) products advertised as powerful coagulants. And yes, he uses his own Lindell-branded media platforms to hawk these products, as well as to “expose” election fraud.
But he has also continued to pour his energy into challenging valid elections, including in Wisconsin and Kentucky. And Minnesota has a history of electing candidates who nobody thought could win: Remember Jesse Ventura? Mike Lindell may have been one of the most comedically rich minor characters to feature in recent U.S. politics. But in the times we’re in, that doesn’t mean we can laugh him off.
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