If you’re familiar with Mike Lindell, you almost know him as “the MyPillow man.” That could mean you saw his ads late at night on cable stations playing only sitcom recordings, “the most comfortable pillows you’ll ever have.” It could also mean that you’ve seen headlines like “MyPillow CEO tells Americans to pray and read the Bible during appearances at White House coronavirus briefing” and “Trump ‘enthusiastic’ about unproven therapeutic coronavirus, says MyPillow creator. ”
Maybe stories like these have created more questions for you.
Who’s the MyPillow Man? Why is he buddies with the president? Why did he take such an active role in the White House coronavirus messages? What is oleandrin, the supposed coronavirus cure that it stimulates? Why is he hugging that pillow so tight?
In 2019, Lindell revealed the answers to some of these questions in his self-published memoir, What are the opportunities?, which details his history as crack cocaine and addicted to gambling, and the story of Christian redemption that only began after his signature product – a washable, direct-to-consumer pillow you formed for your head – was launched and on the market. While it does not necessarily reach its moment in the pandemic spotlight, it does provide a window into the man pushing the latest unproven coronavirus cure.
MyCure for coronavirus
On August 18, Lindell appeared on Anderson Cooper’s show to promote oleandrin, a toxic extract he treats as a treatment for Covid-19 (he is also on the board of Phoenix Biotechnology, a company that sells it). Cooper pointed to Lindell’s lack of scientific background, lack of studies, and financial stakes in the matter. Lindell stated that there have been “human studies, absolutely human studies,” but did not say where, when, or by whom they were conducted.
“It’s the miracle of all time,” Lindell pointed out, “the media is trying to take away this great healing.”
The CEO told Axios over the weekend that Trump “basically said … ‘The FDA has to approve it.'”
As Cassandra Quave, Assistant Professor of Dermatology and Human Health at Emory University explains about The Conversation, oleandrin is derived from the oleander plant, which is toxic and can have serious negative effects on the human heart. They claim that there are no studies that prove it is safe to eat.
This is not the first time Americans have seen Lindell outside of a commercial since the pandemic began. On March 30, he appeared at a press conference with the president. Lindell was there because the MyPillow factories – like many around the world – had pivoted to create PPE for frontline workers, but he eventually resorted to off-scripting to encourage Americans to read their Bibles, and said that “God gave us grace on November 8, 2016.”
Trump in turn said, “I did not know he would do that, but he is a friend of mine and I appreciate it.”
According to Lindell in his interview with Cooper, it was this appearance that brought oleandrin into his life. “That this guy called me on Easter Sunday and said he had an answer to the virus,” Lindell insists, explaining that someone from Phoenix Biotechnology ran him after he saw him at the press conference that Americans said to pray for a healing. In his own narration, his next step was to take this news directly to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, a friend who wrote the foreword to What are the opportunities? Later he joined the board of directors of the company.
Cooper has received pushback for giving Lindell a platform. Lindell has no worries about it: “I think my platform speaks for itself, the platform that God gave me,” he told Cooper.
A very happy boy, sort of
Lindell sees MyPillow not only as a product, but as the foundation of its platform, the importance of which is repeatedly reaffirmed in his memoirs, What are the opportunities?
The book itself has a holographic cover – at first you see Mike smiling and happy, the familiar face from ads on CoziTV, but cock your wrist a hair and you see Mike gliding and running out. The haggard photo was taken by his crack dealer, he writes, to persuade him to stop.
The primary theme in Lindell’s book is his own ability to defeat the odds, whether it’s his youth filled with dangerous moments (such as jumping out of a moving bus or taking a skydiving lesson where his parachute failed to open), his time as a card counter (although he often lost despite the method, lured away from a certain thing by the siren song of real gambling), as his years trying to keep up as a bar owner, husband and father of four, while struggling with a serious drug addiction. While explaining it, he was a shy child and an awkward adult who dealt with that discomfort by acting out.
These stories – of intoxicated fights, short-term prison stamps, muddy motivations, and (by my count) at least 17 shockingly cool police interactions – dominate most of the book, but there is a leitmotif for this larger theme: the seemingly supernatural forces that protect Lindell from his bad behavior and their outcomes. There are prophetic dreams, bodyless writing about the meaning of his life, and a parade of mysterious Christians reaching out to tell him about God’s plan for him.
For years he apparently flirted with Christianity, receiving signs from God in the form of literal phone calls (at one point, five in a 72-hour period), attending church, and considering himself a saint, only to have one more. another more to have seriously awakened.
The name and the idea for MyPillow come to him in a dream, he writes, but he still struggles, and at one point his company almost loses to partners who intend to use his personal problems against him. It is only after a third, fourth, fifth, hundredth chance that Lindell, on the last pages of the book, fully embraces Christ, traps drugs, and is born again as the cross-sporting TV pillowcase we recognize today. . Long before that, the platform and the need to create it appeared again and again.
The purpose of the platform is a little less clear, at least in his book. Maybe to help people, as Lindell told Cooper. Even before he became sober, Lindell writes that he discovered an opportunity to talk others out of their own addiction. He also founded the Lindell Foundation in 2012; he explains in the book that it “focused on donations from the private sector to fat needs without administration costs.” The current status of the foundation is unclear; the website links back to its personal page.
Maybe the goal is to evangelize Christianity? That seems clear from the way he spends his time in the spotlight, but there is a bit of circular logic to it: God has a special plan for Mike to have a special platform for God.
Enter Donald Trump.
A political wake-up call of late in life
For the first 270-some foreign pages of his just-over-300-page memoir, Mike Lindell does not seem to have a personal policy to talk about. In fact, it is more than 200 pages long that the central relationship in his life – his relationship with Jesus – begins to take shape. But once Lindell gets something in his sight, according to his own estimate, he takes it for granted.
As Lindell puts it, not long after God found (and a good wife), he found Republicanism, specifically on a 2015 flight to Israel sponsored by Salem Radio with his friend Stephen Baldwin and conservative radio host Kevin McCullough. Just Across the Ocean, McCullough, author of The kind of man every man should be en MuscleHead Revolution, began explaining the policy to the 54-year-old CEO of bedding. “I was an elementary school student who was just introduced to a whole new subject,” he writes. Through McCullough’s guidance, he agreed with conservative positions; he describes this literal identification of his own beliefs as “no value judgment.”
At this point, Lindell was already a Fox News fortress thanks to his ads, which had proved unusually successful when they were broadcast on the network. Lindell stated that he “did not buy a political point of view”, but that the ads resonated with the ‘fired’ audience, who liked his ‘invention made in the small town USA’. He had also long been a friend and frequent guest of Don Imus.
The actual political conversion he describes took place shortly after Lindell – yup – had a dream where he met Donald Trump and posed the two together for a photo. At this point in 2015, Trump was weeks away from announcing his candidacy for president, and the men had never met, but by August of 2016, they had met in Trump Tower, in pursuit of Lindell’s “preform.” Lindell had become active in Republican circles, honored with the 2015 Patriot Award from the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation (nominated by buddy Stephen Baldwin), attended the National Prayer Breakfast to be disappointed in President Obama, attended the RNC and was friendly words with the Trump children.
His relationship with Trump makes sense to Lindell – if any man were to raise his platform, it would be by bringing him into agreement with a friendly spirit pitchman, a man with whom he shares a cherished past and evangelical overtures. In this way, it also makes sense for Trump; Lindell has the religious bona fides. Immediately after meeting, Lindell writes, Trump asks Lindell about God.
Immediately his eyes fell on the silver cross near my neck. ‘In your ads I always see you carrying your cross. Are you a Christian? “
Lindell laughs and confirms it, saying “this is a divine designation for sure.” It’s a match made, well, somewhere. Lindell considers Trump to be “real and honest”, with “no particular agenda other than to get one citizen’s opinion on things.” Since then, Lindell has been a die-hard fan. And the president loves his supporters.
It’s in Mike Lindell’s apparent self-esteem – as a man with a particular calling of God – and his presentation – as just a baby in the world, learning about Democrats versus Republicans in his late middle age, an adult who ‘ t believes that a candidate for president would meet with a stranger to just shoot the kite – that his relationship with oleandrin makes some sense.
In his life, according to his book, people just call him out of the blue and tell him he is special. And it is not for him to ask exactly why. For Lindell, a message from a stranger claiming he has the cure for the coronavirus is one that only he – and his platform – can bring to the masses, well, that’s par for the course. That’s just a fulfillment of the big, hefty plan. That the answer to everyone’s problems would be him might be unpredictable, but, well, why not? What are the opportunities?
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