President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement was not enough to convince Minnesota Republican voters to choose “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell as their candidate for governor. Lindell lost by more than 10 percentage points to the state’s House Speaker Lisa Demuth, but true to his status as one of the nation’s preeminent election conspiracy theorists, Lindell has so far refused to concede, vowing instead to investigate supposed “anomalies” in the results.
Lindell, whose early lead in the polls had been cut by Demuth, declared himself “very confident” on Election Day. “We can’t reconcile these,” he said as the results came in. “This is mathematically impossible.”
Lindell reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars in a quixotic quest to prove that Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen were true. He made similar claims about the 2022 midterms.
Rep. Ted Lieu mocked Lindell’s claims in a social media post, writing, “Many people say Venezuela rigged the election against Mike Lindell because they don’t like his pillows. Never seen anything like it.”
Lindell has also been a favorite of religious-right figures like podcaster Eric Metaxas, one of the right-wing media figures that benefitted from MyPillow advertising. Last year, Lindell touted his plans to run for governor on FlashPoint, a platform for Christian nationalist and MAGA propaganda, calling Minnesota “a Trojan Horse for a lot of evil.” He has portrayed his promotion of election conspiracy theories as a spiritual crusade, using a Christian nationalist graphic to raise money to support his efforts.
