By Andrew Lawton
Companies used to go through painstaking lengths to avoid entering the political fray. Now, they’re encouraged to leap into it – so long as they leap left, that is. A Minnesota company is paying a steep price for going the other way.
It’s a high-stakes pillow fight.
If you’ve listened to talk radio or watched cable news in the last few years, it’s all but impossible for MyPillow to not have crossed your radar. The pillow company – which has now expanded to sheets and towels, among other products – is the brainchild of Mike Lindell, a former crack user who built his business while battling addiction and eventually getting himself clean and sober.
It’s a story that exemplifies the American dream, but one Lindell concedes was only possible because of Christ’s love.
Lindell is an unapologetic Christian, who credits both his recovery from addiction and his business success to the Lord. In a February interview on my show, Lindell said “MyPillow was just a platform for a much bigger calling that God had called for me.”
This calling has entangled Lindell in politics, becoming a friend and fierce ally of former president Donald Trump, which includes support of Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rife with electoral fraud – allegations Lindell bolstered in a documentary he produced, entitled Absolute Proof.
The election fraud narrative has been used as a cudgel against the political right, with social media companies purging large numbers of right-leaning accounts under the auspices of combating “disinformation.” This shows a lack of magnanimity from the left, which isn’t all that surprising given that the Democrats tried to impeach and remove Trump from an office he no longer held.
Lindell was a casuality of this purge, with Twitter suspending his account and later, MyPillow’s official corporate account. Several retail outlets, including Canada’s home shopping channel, Today’s Shopping Choice, also delisted MyPillow products from their catalogues.
Being a conservative in today’s culture wars is hard enough – all the more so if you’re in business. Businesses aren’t penalized for being political, just for being on the political right. I don’t recall any companies getting cancelled when they wrapped themselves in #BlackLivesMatter branding despite that movement’s inclusion of violent rioters and those calling for police to be killed.
While I will always support an individual’s or corporation’s right to speak up, even about politics, I long for the days when businesses were allowed to maintain a deliberate agnosticism on such issues.
I asked Lindell why he even bothers with politics, with the controversy and potential financial loss it can summon. I was especially curious, given that by his own admission he had never been political or ideological, until a meeting with then-candidate Trump in 2016.
“I had never voted. I didn’t know a liberal from a conservative, Republican from a Democrat,” he said. “We talked about all these things like MyPillow being made in the USA and all this manufacturing … And (Trump) said, ‘I’m going to bring the jobs back.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to have this network that’s going to help addicts.’ He goes, ‘I’m going to stop the drugs pouring in.’ It was just so common sense. It was like, I’m going, ‘Wow, politics does affect us all, everything we do’.”
Lindell felt a “divine appointment” to engage in the political process, and hasn’t backed down despite the cancel mob’s pursuit of him and his pillows.
Despite more than a dozen brands no longer wishing to associate with him, he says MyPillow is doing better than ever.
Whatever one thinks of Lindell’s politics, it’s encouraging to see someone stand tall before the mob rather than cowering before it. There is a lesson to be gleaned from seeing such a stand as well, given his business appears to be doing well not just in spite of this, but because of it.
Christians have the added knowledge that God is there to catch you when you take a leap of faith, something we all need reminding of from time to time.
During a tense interview on CNN last August, Anderson Cooper asked Lindell, “How do you sleep at night?” Though he didn’t say it, the answer is fairly evident – on a comfortable pillow with God by his side.
