Mike Lindell Claims His Biography is Banned Everywhere

On Monday, the controversial CEO of MyPillow appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to discuss his memoir. He repeated his belief that his support for former president Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud has cost him business, and alleged that his biography had been banned from every bookstore in the country.

Total ban

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“By the way, Steve,” Lindell said, “I wanted to tell you. Did you know my book is banned in every bookstore in the country? Every bookstore, even Christianbook.com, they’ve all banned it. Everybody.”

New book

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Lindell’s new book is a “raw, authentic account” of his life, according to him. He told Bannon that the book covers his journey from “being a crack addict to Jesus.”

Conversion

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Lindell told Bannon that it had been seven years since he “surrendered to Jesus Christ.” He started his pillow business in 2004 and founded MyPillow in 2009.

Dubious claim

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“You’re gonna find out,” Lindell insisted, “I didn’t change, our country changed. I was the same person before all this happened — now I’m being attacked every day.”

The reality

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In October, the New York Times reported that “Lindell has been one of the leading financial supporters of the election denial movement” for “nearly three years.” He has faced multiple defamation lawsuits over his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Big spender

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Lindell claimed in 2023 that he spent some $60 million of his own money on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election. According to the New York Times, he also used MyPillow to support this campaign by purchasing advertising to support right-wing media outlets, especially those that aired and amplified his claims.

Losing bet

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In April 2023, Lindell was ordered to pay a software engineer $5 million. The engineer had taken a challenge offered by Lindell to debunk data that the CEO claimed proved the 2020 election had been hacked.

Challenge lost

The “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge, as Lindell called the bet, offered participants a hefty prize if they could prove the CEO’s data was invalid. After Robert Zeidman did so, Lindell refused to pay.

Shared support

According to the New York Times, Bannon’s War Room podcast has a revenue-sharing agreement with MyPillow. The podcast promotes the company and Bannon has frequently cast Lindell as a victim of government oppression.

Out of cash

In October, Lindell’s legal team quit, citing his inability to pay them. He didn’t contest this, acknowledging that he was struggling for cash and unable to pay his mounting legal bills. “We lost everything, every dime,” he said to NBC News. “All of it is gone.”

New idea

In August, Lindell announced a new wireless monitoring device that he claimed would be able to detect if voting machines were connected to the internet. However, experts told ABC News that such devices were pointless — for example, because many voting machines are “physically incapable” of connecting to the internet.

Bad idea

“This is more peddling of his lies about election equipment,” the senior director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice said. “I think the most important thing to know about voting machines in the United States is that virtually all of them have a paper record of every vote.”

Lies upon lies

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“Mike Lindell has gotten away with lying a lot about elections,” the director continued, “but it’s not without consequences and not without harms to individuals who work in elections — and more broadly to the functioning of our democratic system.”