Mike Lindell Interview: The Jesse Ventura of Pillows
In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk to Mike Lindell. Mike Lindell is the founder and current CEO of My Pillow. Mike Lindell first gained fame for starring in the My Pillow infomercials sporting his trademark mustache, periwinkle blue shirt, and cross necklace. He has gained recent notoriety for becoming one of President Trump's biggest supporters. Mike shows why he is always the best at parties by sharing stories of his crack addiction, becoming a commercial celebrity, and how the media can't cancel him. Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans Don't forget to check out our store and pick up your Christmas gifts! Subscription deals The Sacred Texts Santa punching heretics shirt Topics Discussed What makes the My Pillow Great? How an inventor's mind works Becoming an Evangelical speaker World record pillow fight Bible Verses with My Pillow Addiction story Getting cut off from a drug dealer Lindell Recovery Network Donald Trump Swords, drugs, Mexico Armed robbery as a card counter Infomercials Been on tv 3.2 million times Periwinkle Blue shirts Government is sequestering the supplements South Dakota has been doing it right California's insanity with Covid Donald Trump and the election Addiction centers Mask giveaway with a two hour sermon Subscriber Portion My Pillow voting machine My Pillow can help with all the corruption in politics Wearing a cross at the crack house and on TV Breaking records on the shopping network Hears God by staying proactive in Prayer Funding Unplanned Riding a bulldozer in Unplanned Being attacked by Jack Dorky 10 Questions
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Brian Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
How'd you sleep last night, Kyle?
I slept terrible, but it's not because of the MyPillow that I was sleeping on.
It was because my son came in and started kicking me, and he was up for like two hours in the middle of the night.
Then I couldn't go back to sleep.
I probably got maybe three hours of sleep last night.
Brutal.
But when I was lying down trying to sleep, my head was very comfortable.
On the Mike Lindell, My Pillow.
Greatest pillow ever made.
That's good.
According to Mike Lindell.
He's very, yeah.
This guy's very passionate about pillows.
Yeah.
We got him fired up about three things.
Pillows?
Pillows?
Trump?
No, Trump.
Jesus, and crack.
That's four.
That's four things.
I forgot about the crack.
Crack in and negative.
He wasn't excited.
Crack, man.
Though you could imagine when he was into it, he could probably sell it really well.
He's a good sale.
Like, he's a seller.
You can tell.
It was a very interesting interview because it ramped up.
Like at first, we asked our two or three questions that we had about pillows, and we were about five minutes in.
Yeah.
And I go, well, we got nothing else.
Yeah, I know.
We didn't really know what we were going to talk about.
And I think we started to catch on that this guy is a total character.
He has a lot of crazy things.
We always ask, got any cool stories?
Well, this guy has lots of crazy stories.
So it was like, we do need to get our fact checkers on.
I'm curious.
But he has some wild stories.
Swords to his throat, guns to his head.
Impressions of Mike Lindell would be like, hey, Mike, where do you get your idea for pillows?
And he goes like, well, so I was, you know, I was on crack and then I was swimming with sharks down near Peru.
And then the mafia.
Seven bullet holes in my chest.
And so I was escaping from them.
And we had been skydiving on that trip.
And I was riding a grizzly bear back across the U.S. border.
On fire.
And we got attacked by a group of coyotes when the animal.
Right.
Not the drug.
But then also them.
They came later.
And they came teamed up riding coyotes.
And so then I decided people needed a soft pillow.
Well, no, because and then the heavens opened up and the idea for the pillow beamed into his mind from God.
And I say this very lovingly because this is, and then we would say, we would have to say, wait, back up and tell us about the sharks.
And then he'd gloss over a crazy story.
But you can hear the interview yourself.
That's what we're about here.
So enjoy.
Yeah, so enjoy this interview.
Mike Lindell.
All right, everybody.
Well, we are here with the legendary Mike Lindell of My Pillow Fame.
That's right.
You people demanded it, and here we are.
Do you have any pillow nicknames?
Like, I was thinking when I was first watching your videos, I was thinking the Jesse Ventura of pillows.
Jesse Ventura of pillows.
I don't know why I thought all these guys become like billionaires selling like a mundane product, like a thing you wouldn't think could make you rich, because there's so many already out there.
Like there's already a bunch of pillows.
Like, how do you get rich off pillows?
That's usually a guy that's like an immigrant or something.
So, I thought you're going to be like, I'm Mike Lindell.
Make a pillow.
And then I heard you're like, Mark Lindell.
You sound like well, the way you do it, you do it against all odds with the grace of God.
You get a patent and solve a problem that's never been solved before.
People thought the pillow was the pillow until my pillow came along.
So, what makes the my pillow stand out the most?
Well, here's the thing: first, you got to talk about the problem: sleep is all about keeping your neck straight at night and temperature.
So, if your neck straight, if you're after you got down, it goes down.
We call it a downer.
If your pillow is too high, it's all about height, your distance from your head to your bed, regardless of your sleep position.
So, when you sleep on pillows in the past that aren't adjustable, because we all, it's the only product out there where it's based on frame size, but nobody made it adjustable.
And that's what my pillow is: the patented Phil, you can adjust exactly what you need individually for any sleep position.
So, you adjust it, it holds there, and you get great sleep.
Wait, how do you adjust it?
So, I slept on a MyPillow last me too.
We both did for the first preparation for this interview, and it was pretty good.
Yeah, it was good.
It was like sleeping on a light cloud or something.
It was pretty, you didn't get sink in too far.
Mine sunk in pretty far, and I wonder if I didn't do it right.
But you adjust it like a down pillow, only it won't go down.
Now, you guys didn't call me.
I don't know who fits you, but we have four different loft levels.
I see you on the you know, it's all about your like you.
Um, you know, you might have that, you might have got the white level, we have a green level, which is next level up.
So, but you can micro-adjust that when you adjust it, which I mean, you make it as thick as you want, it holds there.
It's like uh, you know, it holds you in that exact height, just like suiting your height.
I want platinum level, we should have got the best.
Yeah, you could have got the platinum, so you don't have to call out a my pillow adjustment guy to adjust your pillow, you just come to your house, or you just adjust it yourself, but you've got to get fitted.
And we have a whole fitting chart.
My employees, when you call and they fit you on the spot, ask you a couple questions, and then also uh, we have it online because it makes a difference if you're side, back, stomach, or all three, but it really makes the difference of your frame size.
Yeah, so what's the because I assume that there was a period of your life where you didn't know anything about pillows, and then suddenly you're like, oh, pillows, and then you started learning a bunch.
What was that process?
I well, I used to be an addict, so I didn't sleep a lot, but when I did sleep, I wanted it to be quality.
But I had uh, I go back all the way till I was 16 years old, and I spent my first paycheck at a grocery store on a pillow.
I figured if I bought a really expensive pillow, maybe it would work.
That was in 1977.
I think I spent $80 on a pillow, couldn't return it because, and it was a down pillow, and that's been the big lie.
Well, up until I guess it was the early 2000s, I was seeing a chiropractor and stuff, and three days later, I'd be right back and get it out and see him give them another $100.
And I knew it was my pillow.
People stack them, you use your arm, all these things, and nothing worked.
And I had to, every till I tried, and I actually had a dream of the mod pill that made.
And I wrote it all the house.
I wrote into snipper ways to connect the logo or connect the Y and the P.
And my daughter, one of my daughters came upstairs.
She goes, What are you doing, Dad?
And I go, I'm going to invent this pillow.
It's going to change the world.
It's going to be called my pillow.
It's going to help everybody.
She grabbed a glass of water.
She goes, That's really random, dad.
And all my friends laughed at me.
And they're going, you know, I was a crack addict too, a former crack addict.
My friends are laughing at me, going, Mike's going to, Mike thinks he's going to get a pen on a pillow.
What is he on?
Crack?
You know, Is it possible the crack helped you think of a crazy pillow?
No, that was.
That was all God.
This crack was a separate platform, a separate problem.
And, you know, when I, like I said, I had, and when I did invent, I stayed off the crack.
I was about 10, almost over a year inventing it because I didn't want to stop with just a pillow that was adjusted and worked.
I wanted it to, you'd be able to go down the streets and say, what do you want the pillow?
I want one that lasts.
I'm tired of spending money on pillows.
The average American spent about 40 pillows in a 10-year period, six pillows per person per household that didn't work.
So I put a 10-year warranty on it.
And then, what good is the 10-year warranty if you can't wash and dry it?
So that's where, you know, pillows you couldn't wash and dry.
So, but so I went back to the drawing board, mortgaged my house, and went into get that done.
And made in the USA, anything anyone would want, my pillows got it.
Cup holder, the money.
But you know, you know, you guys, for any inventor or entrepreneur, I always tell them: take the problem and here's the solution and just do it right on down the line.
Don't just quit and say, okay, here's the problem solution.
I want every little problem within that product solved.
And then worry about price points afterwards.
You know, my pill came out, it was very high price.
It cost me more to make back then than I sell it for now.
I mean, it was so expensive to make, but I still would solve such a problem.
It was, you know, it manifests work with everybody.
Are you always on?
Are you like always talking about pillows?
Or what do you do in your spare time?
No, lately, I talk about my.
I'm a evangelist.
I'm going around the country.
I've been doing evangelistic speaking events, you know, Evangelical.
I'm back in the greatest president that ever lived.
And that's Obama or which president?
Obama or Trump.
Oh, Trump.
I'm not sure.
I don't want to get too dark here, but pillows, if you watch a lot of movies, I mean, you can sleep on them, but they're used for nefarious purposes as well.
A lot of murdering with pillows.
There's smothering.
There's also because it's breathable.
So I was wondering, you thought of that ahead of time.
You're like, so the guy's trying.
He's like, nope, can't do it.
You may live.
There's also one I want to know about.
Have you ever thought of this?
You can use a pillow as a silencer, put your gun on the pillow.
Does that test that out and make sure they can't do that?
They call the cops or something instead.
Never thought of that.
Never crossed my mind.
I'm just, we're trying to help you out.
Just, you know, make it even more thorough.
Yeah.
So, okay, here's one I was curious about.
I was looking and you know, watching all these little videos, and one of the videos said that you had a pillow fight that broke a world record.
Two of them.
Two of them.
Broke.
Two of them.
Yeah, I love hearing about world records.
So tell us about this pillow.
One was 2014 and a Saints game in Minnesota.
And then I re-broke it.
It was actually, you talk about polls and numbers.
It was actually over 50,000 people at U.S. Bank Stadium.
There was a big Christian event where I told my story.
And they actually combined the world record pillow fight with that.
But there's when you break a record, they have all these rules that people had to be swinging for a minute.
And you can't quit.
You have to be continually swinging.
Or they have to have one judge per 50 people.
So out of the 50,000, I think the record is, I don't know, 8,000 out of the 50,000, but it's still shattered the record.
And what, was this a battle to the last man standing, or how did it pan out?
No, it's just a pillow.
This is the biggest book in World Record.
I just did it to get people there to give them a message to God.
Maybe I missed my transformation and we gave away fifth.
We gave away 66,000 pillows.
And yeah, a lot of them went home with more, but they gave them away in the streets.
So that was pretty cool.
You ever thought about printing Bible verses on the My Pillows like In-N-Out does on the bottom of the cup?
You actually get our go anywhere pills.
We just came out with Bible pillows.
The scenes, the children's pills have scenes from the Bible like Mozart, David and Goliath, Daniel the Lion's Den.
We've got all these scenes.
And then every other, every product I send out comes from the Bible verse.
It falls out of the package.
And you don't know if I sent it or if it just got there to mine me.
It's made out of onion paper.
So it's like right out of the Bible.
You talk a lot about your conversion story.
I'm curious, what was the story?
I mean, you say often that, you know, you were in this life of doing drugs and addiction and you kind of came out of it.
What was that story?
I mean, was there a what was the church involved?
Or like, what was the, what's the story behind that?
Oh, if the, you know, my story goes back to, you know, my parents divorced when I was seven years old.
And addiction is not a disease.
It comes, you know, it comes from childhood, from trauma, final.
I got into a new school when I was seven years old, but when I was the only kid from a broken home, and I either would manifest either I would show off, hey, watch me jump out this bus window, a moving bus with him, or I would not talk to people.
So you have this devil's lie to not good enough, the fear of rejection, you can't.
I never talked to people if I didn't know them.
You don't get rejected if you don't talk to people.
Well, then once that was introduced to cocaine in the early 80s, I could talk your ear off.
You know, drugs and alcohol addiction gives people a false sense of, I get false courage, hides pain.
It's escape.
There's a lot of things that I don't care what the addiction is.
And I was a very functioning addict.
I think today people realize, or they say, oh, an addict is someone in the streets homeless or this down and out.
No, it's affected by all of us, no matter how many forks you eat with.
Addiction is rampant.
And we were very functional.
I was a very functioning addict.
I married.
I got married 20-year marriage.
And I had all these different businesses and had successes and failures.
But we're in a neighborhood.
You wouldn't know it on paper looking at it that we were had these addiction problems.
And anyway, in the early 2000s, it turned to crack cocaine, which is different than cocaine.
And that's not a social drug.
They hide and peek out some stuff.
And that was a parallel railroad trap with my pillow.
And I lost a 20-year marriage.
I had a lot of betrayal.
People attacked me, tried to take me out of my pillow.
It was like a blip on the radar in 2008.
And then in 2008, a couple of things happened.
One is my drug dealers, I came out.
I was in downtown Minneapolis and I came out of the room and there were all three of them, the biggest dealers, standing there.
And they're going, they knew of each other, but they had never met.
And the one guy goes, what's this all about?
They go, Mike, you've been up 14 days.
We're cutting you off.
And I go, what is this an intervention?
He goes, call it whatever you want.
Now, the one guy left in disgust.
And the other guy went down the streets to get the word out.
I've since talked to him.
He works for me.
I'm born again Christian.
But he said, he goes, yeah, that was easy.
I just said, you see some white guy with a mustache.
They said, you sell me anything.
We're going to do it.
So he gets the word out.
And I come back upstairs at 2:30 in the morning.
The last one fell asleep.
I went down the streets of Minneapolis, came back upstairs, and I said, and he's waiting up for me.
And he said, how'd that work out for any?
I was so mad.
He said, he said, you've been telling us for years that this high pillow thing is just a platform for God.
You're going to come back and help us someday get out of this addiction world we're living in.
And that's, you know, that was, I didn't quit that day, but they, those two of those guys worked for me now, born again Christians, and they, they, um, they believed in me so much because I would tell them all the time, I'm going to quit and I'm going to come back and have this huge platform, which I do now, the Lindell Recovery Network, that's going to help millions of addicts across this country.
But that happened.
And then in the fall, my son looked at me, a tear in his eye when he came back from a hunting trip.
He says, he was 18.
He says, I want out of here, Dad.
And that was very hard for him to say, I thought I was hiding this.
I'm cracking stuff.
And then my friend came to me in December of that year, and he was my equal.
We had both started cocaine at the same time, both turned to crack at the same time.
And he had been straight for four years, and I hadn't seen him.
And I go, Dick, what are you doing here?
And I lost my pillow is just a little blip on a post.
There's nothing left, basically.
And I'm out in those woods of this house.
He comes popping in.
He says, I didn't see it before he said.
I said, what are you doing here?
He says, the Lord led me here.
What are you doing?
And remember, he was my equal.
We had started cracking at the same time, everything.
And the first question I asked him, I said, as long as you're here, I said, Dick, is it boring?
And he said, no, man, it's not boring.
And I think that planted seeds there are hope for me.
I called my hope matches in my recovery network.
And then a month later, I quit everything.
I prayed to God.
I said, God, I'll do this big platform.
I knew I had a big calling.
And I knew the next day my calling would be gone.
And I made sure I didn't have any money.
Everything was gone.
And that would be with God, all things are possible.
Greatest comeback.
But I prayed that I never had the desire again for any addiction.
And I woke up the next day and it was gone.
Now, I did go two months later.
I'll fast forward two months later.
I went to a, I felt led to go to a faith-based treatment center by our church.
And I went in there.
And I had been to secular treatment centers that didn't work.
And they planted seeds like, which is very similar to your teen challenges, Salvation Army Salad.
They're the ones that work.
But it wasn't until February 18, 2017, where I did a full surrender.
But they planted seeds there and they brought them back to childhood and addressed the wounds that manifested into addiction.
And at that time, when I got out of addiction on that day, my pillow was just nothing.
And it was every all my shoulders were taken.
Everything was taken.
It was just basically me and me at a dream left.
So let's talk about your support for President Trump.
There's a lot of people that obviously criticize Christians who support Trump.
And being a CEO, like a lot of corporations kind of, obviously discourage their employees from speaking out, you know, politically if they're more conservative.
What's that been like for you?
What motivates you to speak out so much of yourself?
Well, let me tell you, that's one of my easiest answers.
When I came out of addiction, I looked around me.
I had never voted on my life.
I didn't know a liberal from a conservative.
I knew nothing about politics.
I didn't even think they affected me.
Who cares who's president?
Who cares about this?
I was an addict.
I was just, you know, submerged living in the suburbs.
And when I came out of it, though, all my friends had, you know, losing their houses.
I had already lost mine.
They had lost careers that they had had.
People were unemployed.
And then all of a sudden, I started paying attention.
And I got a president giving money to an evil empire overseas.
And all these things were going on.
And I'm going, what did I miss?
You got your halfway through.
One of my kids, baseball games, and these, and they give out first-place trophies during a tournament.
I go, did I miss something here?
And all of a sudden, I asked the people in charge, they said, why are we giving out first-grace trophies?
I go and go, well, little Johnny cried last year because he didn't get a trophy.
I go, well, little Johnny's a terrible ball player.
This is crazy.
What I had seen what I grew up with, I mean, things like this, I just couldn't fathom.
And I'm going, what did I miss?
I look in my home state of Minnesota.
It was horrific things that were going on.
But then in the summer of 2016, Donald Trump reached out to me for a private meeting.
So I flew out there and it was, and everyone says, you're not going to meet him alone.
And whatever you do, don't tell him you were a crack addict.
And I'm going, okay.
Well, God set that up.
And I'll tell you, I was alone.
And one of the first things I said to him, I said, you know, I was a former crack addict.
And I kind of looked at him like, you know, and he said, I said, I wanted to save millions of Americans addiction thing.
He goes, I'm going to stop the drugs pouring in.
We talked about my faith.
We talked about made the USA, all these things.
It was just too much talking.
And I walked out of there after a half hour and going, he's going to be the greatest president ever.
And because it was such a smart, I'm looking at his common sense.
This is our problem solution.
But I've read people, I've been in the streets.
I've had guns to my head and swords to my throat in Mexico.
I've been competing with four fortunes with billionaires.
And this guy had no agenda, no hidden agenda other than to help this country and help us.
Well, I went and talked to his employees and I talked to his employees and every single one of them had the same story that he's a great leader.
He was a great boss.
He had helped them personally and individually.
Most of them were minorities.
And I get back to Minnesota.
This was August 15th, 2016.
I get back to Minnesota and I went to do a press release to tell it to tell Minnesota, hey, I tell everyone, I know this guy.
He's going to be awesome, right?
He's going to solve these problems.
Well, my board was even against it.
They're going, you can't do that.
You're going to lose half our business.
And I walked out of the meeting and my CMO came out.
She said, you know, we didn't get this all this far by you now.
Listen to God.
I went back in there.
I said, yeah, we're going to get all this farm by me now.
Listen to God.
Even when I wasn't totally saved, I would pray about things that were for wisdom and discernment.
I did that press release.
All I said was I met the guy, didn't say what we talked about, didn't say anything about whether it was good or bad or whether I like whether I was a Republican or Democrat.
That was an injury.
And the media attacked me.
They called me a racist.
None of them put me on their show.
And that's when I went all in.
And you can never, ever take that away from me.
And that's why I've been able to fight back.
I got back to in Minnesota, the Crooked Better Business Bureau then took me from an A plus to an F.
I got attacked.
I was up for their highest award, their torture work for the best company in the country.
And they put me from an A plus to an F. All these things started happening.
Like, why am I getting attacked for just believing in a guy that, you know, won the presidency?
And I'll tell you, anyone out there that lives in fear, my busiest day at my pillow is always the day we're in.
I've got over 2,000 employees now.
Every day it gets better and better.
The more I stick up for what I believe in, because you can't take that from me.
I know I'm doing the right thing.
I met the guy.
You can't sit and tell me, oh, I think the guy's racist.
I met him.
I know him.
He's a friend of mine now.
And that's it.
I want to continue this path, but you very quickly glossed over a detail of your past there.
Had swords held at your throat in Mexico.
I want to hear that story.
Just as an aside, well, that sounds like a crazy story.
I got caught in the middle.
I was on a vacation with my wife at the time and this other couple.
And we had been down, we had been down there a few times.
And I got caught up buying cocaine in the middle of two cartel wars.
I mean, basically, they were fighting, and I'm buying cocaine.
And the guy pulls out his, there were three guys, and uh, I'm up, and they thought it was somebody that had happened the year before, which actually I was, uh, because I got caught up in there too.
It's like called bad luck or whatever.
Well, anyway, the uh, the guy pulls his sword out, goes to my throat, and I grab it.
And uh, I go, I'm not buying this sword, and I'm going.
And you go, and the one guy steps up, he goes, Senor, he's not, he's not selling your sword.
He wants to cut off your head.
And I start showing like, What do you mean?
My wife's really gonna be upset.
I'm putting it into my neck.
And what I learned for a long time ago, way back when, was if you show people a distraction in those situations, I've been in so many of those situations where you distract them with something they didn't see, expect, you know.
Um, and uh, if you read my book, the prologue in my book, that's that scene, and that wasn't even the scariest moment of my life.
It was about 10 minutes later when the guy asked me for a cigarette.
I went to pull my cigarette pack out, and there was my cocaine.
My, you know, that I thought I lost the real cocaine, and I wouldn't be buying cocaine from these guys if I already had cocaine.
So, that would have been if they would have seen that, I would have been instantly killed.
And, but they have all kinds of in my book, I had all kinds of uh uh incidents like that, but that was one of the that was the scariest moment of my life when it was like there would have been this time.
He wouldn't have just shown me how sharp the sword was, it would have been optimistic.
Yeah, if your head got cut off, that would have destroyed your pillow career.
That's what I told the guy.
No, that would be bad.
I was, you know, in my book, I was armed rob at the uh Kansas City when I was a professional card counter, too.
And I was down in Kansas City, one of the stories in the book, and I had anger issues back then.
And I lost all my money in the casino because I played crafts instead of blackjack.
And I got lost, and I ended up in the worst part of Kansas City.
And I'm just coffee road and my topper fell off my back of my truck, and I only had six dollars left.
It was three o'clock in the morning.
I know bad places, I've been in enough bad places.
Well, here are two guys come down off the bank there, and these trees were hanging over the road.
He pulls a gun out, and I just lost it.
I flipped down on him, put that gun, you're gonna help me put this topper on, blah, blah, blah.
I got six dollars.
You can each have three.
They didn't say a word, they helped put the topper on, and they walked away shaking their heads.
I'm yelling, get back here, I'm good for my word.
And I got cocaine, we can slip the cocaine, and they're shaking their head.
But I felt bad for yelling at these guys.
I mean, I just lost my mind.
I thought guys were gonna, you know, but this, you know, it was uh interesting.
Then a cop pulled me over two blocks away, and he says, What are you doing?
And I said, He said, I said, My topper fell off.
I'm going back to Minnesota.
He says, Well, you're three miles from 35.
And he said, We don't even go in there.
It's so dangerous.
I said, Really, two nice guys just helped me put my topper on.
And, you know, that kind of distracted me's folks.
He goes, Really?
And all the cocaine sitting in the truck, you know, that I, but that just distracted him too.
It was, it was kind of just a crazy story.
You know, yeah, probably nobody can top your stories at parties.
You're the guy that everyone circled around.
Well, I'll tell you what, though.
Now, I had dropped out of college after one quarter, and I was working at a drive-in movie theater and at that grocery store, which I got fired at.
And I got fired there.
So I get to this class reunion and all my classmates are talking about, boy, they started families.
Their careers are going great.
They've maybe wherever they graduate from college and all these great things.
Well, I took over that reunion and told them, I go, you know, the Mafia, I own 20 grand, they came to my house for football bats to break my arm.
I took skydiving and I was riding down there on my motorcycle and fell asleep and crashed it, got up, and then I got down there and my parachute didn't open.
So I'm telling them all these stories, which were true.
And I took over the reunion, but I got home that night and I laid in bed and I had this deep sadness.
I really wanted what they had.
But that was my own self-worth.
That's all I had was my stories and this craziness lifestyle.
You know, I had 14 near-death experiences.
I've had, you name it, it's happened.
And it was, you know, most of it brought on by myself.
I like that your little asides when you're telling a story are more interesting than my actual stories.
You're telling a story about your traffic tickets.
And you're like, I was like, hey, I was trapped under the ice.
And that's incredible.
Yeah.
I want to keep digging here.
So, you know, the famous infomercial shows on Fox News and stuff.
How many takes did they do to get you to do that?
Yeah.
Your part.
How much the first infomercial was in 2011.
It's quite a story.
Early 2011, my pillow, no box stores would take us when I invented it.
It was a complete shutout.
So I did home shows and fairs for seven years.
And I told my friends and family, I go, you know what?
Let's all put our money together.
I have a dream of an infomercial and not the commercials you see now.
These are half hour infomercials.
And I said, it's going to be the biggest one in the world.
I didn't know they didn't work.
It's just to get you in box stores, which had already turned me down.
So, but I still believed in it so much.
And I've done all these shows.
And I wanted to do it just like with me selling.
And even though I'd never been in front of an audience, I was scared to death to go on camera.
But I knew it worked at the show.
I was talking to people.
Well, they said, no, that'll never work.
You know, you need an actor.
And this will never work.
And I said, well, it's my money.
So we put our money together.
In August of 2011, they brought in someone from Hollywood, this producer.
And we were doing our reads the night before, me and this scout, a friend of mine that did shows too.
And he texts the other guy and said, this is the worst guy I've ever seen.
He'll never make it on TV.
Why did you bring me here?
He goes, shut up.
And when that thing, when we filmed it, I was scared to death doing it with the audience because it was all real, just like my commercials now.
I don't know when I go in there to film, we do all our own commercials ourselves.
And but when we did that, it aired October 7th at three in the morning.
I was living in my sister's basement with nothing again.
And I had like maybe 10 to 15 employees.
When that aired 40 days later, I had 500 employees.
It just exploded because there was this huge need for this product that actually worked.
And, you know, that's, and that's manifested to do it.
You know, in 2014, by the way, in 2012, we got so big and I was $6 million in debt with nothing because all these companies took advantage of me and these other companies were buying media and doing these media with not tracking it like I do now.
So I learned from that and pulled everything in-house and I said, I'm going to run it all myself.
We're going to micromanage and macromanage it.
And we did that.
And we got up to 2014.
We were within two days of going out because it took those two years to dig out of that $6 million hole.
And then in 2014, we came out with a one and two minute commercial that we launched on every channel, not just Fox.
Fox just happens to be one of our biggest ones.
But it was across the board.
Were no, you know, the CNN Msmbc box, every local channel and it just exploded and it's been that way ever since.
Um now yet, you know, i've been on tv now 3.2 million times.
Crazy, how many.
How many periwinkle blue shirts do you own?
I have about 30 of them.
It's like a cartoon character with all the special closets.
I got brand new with that.
I had to find you because they don't make those shirts.
I had to go buy it because I haven't made after that because no, do you have any hot tips for uh, grooming a mustache?
No okay uh, I mean once I had the second with this, about 15 years ago, you know, or 10 now, about 70 years ago.
You have the second most famous mustache in America.
I'm the one who cares, next to Tom Sellek.
Who's he talking about?
Yeah yes yeah Tom yeah, he'll must not have been talking about his.
Yeah um, how many doses of hydroxychloroquine do you take a day?
I don't take any.
I take my own Supplementoleander.com, which that's the one Anderson Cooper attacked me for for uh, if you remember that?
Yeah, I saw that.
Yeah, that 24 minute attack is funny.
Now they're not attacking now that the election's over.
It's funny how this theory's been there.
It's been out there uh, this amazing thing where they, they just suppressed it, just like they did the hydroxychloroquine, all these things that worked.
All this hydroxychloroquine has been around 50 years.
This company that had this uh, Oleander extracts been around 19 years and it's what a shame that they suppressed this.
And uh, you know, and then you got governors like my governor of Minnesota now puts everything back under wraps and made some of the worst decisions of political history.
Um, that you know I i'm just disgusted by everything that's went on, because they're there's that if everybody took this, it'd be open.
The whole uh, the whole, uh nation would be open.
The whole world would be open.
This is, you know, they they've had not just the hydroxychloroquine in the zinc, but the stuff that's uh, my only.com, these uh, other things out there that work.
And if they went and made all their bad decisions of sticking people, like they did in the York, into nursing homes and stuff and uh, right now, the best i'll tell you, you got governors that make a decision here's South Dakota, here's Minnesota.
The South Dakota governor looked it to not break our constitutional rights when this first, this pandemic hit.
She studied our rights and she also went to her scientists and medical people and said okay, what well, she made the best decision.
She did all the businesses essential, including all the churches.
Who gives them the right to stay in a restaurant?
You get a.
You know the virus is in a restaurant, but it's not in a box store.
You can go to the Mall Of America and you can go in there and meet 25 people, but you can't have thanksgiving.
Um, this Minnesota then makes the worst decision in history.
What they did was manifested to riots around the world and uh, in the mayor of Minneapolis.
Now let's look at the two states.
We're in shambles in Minnesota, absolutely shambles in Minneapolis.
You go to south Dakota.
They have the number one economy in the United States, and her tourism is up 150% during a pandemic.
And her death rate that they said would be here is 10 times lower than what the so-called experts projected.
This thing is a man.
It's actually, you get into this pandemic.
It's the biggest bunch of malarkey ever.
It's real.
It's real.
But let's just talk masks.
You have masks.
There's three kinds of masks you can wear that protect you both ways.
Go out and wear a mask if you want and put one that either KN95 or N95 or a treated disposable.
Don't wear a cloth mask.
You're not protecting people.
So you get those masks.
If they wear those masks, you don't have to, if I'm wearing a mask, not stay six feet from me and don't give me a hug.
It's pretty simple.
You know, if I want to go into a business and that business doesn't say you have to wear masks, that's my decision.
You know, and what they've done now, you can just look at all the states and politicized this too, where you have all these rotten Democratic governors and mayors making these horrible decisions that have ruined cities from Portland to Minnesota to all these Minneapolis to all these places.
I talked to my friend Scott Bayo in California.
It's ridiculous there.
We got governors there going out for dinner and telling everyone they got to shut down, except for the except rioters and the homeless there in the streets.
So I guess they can run around.
You know, it's crazy.
We are in California.
Yes, we are there.
Well, I don't know.
Scott tells me, Scott Bayo tells me that it's horrific what they're doing over in LA, what they're doing there.
And it's just, you know, making these decisions to shut things down.
What makes a restaurant?
What makes a restaurant more?
You can go into Palmer or a Plain Depot or a Menards or anything.
You go in there and it's like cattle, but yet you can't get the virus there.
And by the way, the restaurants, 10 o'clock, the virus comes out after 10 o'clock.
So let's shut it down at 10 o'clock.
This is craziness.
It's insanity.
It's political.
And that's the only thing behind it.
I thought at least after the election here, which by the way, Donald Trump will win.
You heard it here at first.
There's enough evidence that they don't even need anymore.
I talked to Sidney Paul two days ago for an hour.
And all the stuff you're going to see this next week is going to blow you away.
I was, California probably went to Donald Trump, but their team was so massive there with those machines.
But anyway, you know, I just don't know why people can't, you know, I can't even believe they're making, you know, like you guys are just like Minnesota.
Okay, here, you can't, you can't even dine outside now.
Is it all to go?
I don't know what's going on there.
Yeah, LA County.
LA County is the worst.
Oh, I think San Francisco is probably pretty bad.
Well, they just voted to take it down the outdoor dining again.
Yeah.
And then one of the ladies who voted for it then drove off and had dinner outside of the outdoor dining.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a vote for us.
She went and had dinner from a restaurant.
I seen that yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So are you going to move Moscow to Texas or something?
No, if I'm taking a running for governor of Minnesota, so I'll just fix the state I'm in.
I'm pretty loyal to my 2,000 employees.
And I lived in Minnesota all my life.
I think it's fixable, but we're at a turning point where it's just the terrible decisions that are made in politics.
Now, obviously, no politics affect everything we do.
Even my addiction network, I'm going to tell you guys, my Linda Recovery Network, you go there and I found out after I had all this thing set up, there are 30 some states that have laws on the books.
In order to counsel an addict, you have to go to college for four years, swim the English Channel, climb 10 coconut trees, do 65 push-ups, all these regulations to treat an addict.
Well, I've forgotten more about addiction than how counselors ever know if they've never been there.
Who cares what they have to say?
They don't know what they're talking about.
So to take that out of the mix, I want an addict treating me that's been through it.
That's my hope.
That's been through it.
How did he get through it?
And to have this, and guess where these regulations are?
There are always places that have this other, the left in there to control you, to control this.
And all these rules, regulations, and bureaucracy that's been on businesses and everything else.
We're sitting right now.
My friend in Minnesota, just my niece, lost her pizza place.
She has lost $250,000 she put in a year and a half ago.
She picked that back in.
The money is sitting in DC right now with the Democrats in Congress.
I just talked to Louie Goldmer this morning.
He said it's horrific.
They have $120 billion they didn't even use last time that's sitting there with the P, whatever it is, PEE or whatever that is, and they're not releasing it out.
You know why?
They're going to wait till after January 5th and then they're, you know, then do it.
You know, it's like, are you kidding me?
These businesses need help right now.
Either you change your rules so they can get back to work and save their businesses and do it right and quit listening to what whoever makes the big call.
Okay, everybody back inside and we're going to shut her down.
Well, you know, why 10 o'clock?
Why not make the restaurants six o'clock?
Magic little number.
You know, you guys should be asking that in LA County out there.
You know, I'm out there all the time.
You know, who decides that?
You can't even dine outside.
What is the wind going to blow?
Are you, you know, this is crazy?
Yeah, what's it going to take?
Is it going to take businesses defying?
And I mean, if one business defies the orders, they're going to get shut down.
But if everybody doesn't, yeah.
That's what it's going to have to take.
And, you know, it's going to have to take people to stick up for themselves, maybe get a, you know, you know, a coalition and say, we're not going to take it anymore.
Our businesses start with a block.
You know, I mean, you know, obviously it's just crazy.
You know, I see it.
I feel bad for the people that, you know, and then they deep businesses like my governor, you know, when he first did this, all these essential businesses that he said were essential.
His friends owned the biggest can store in Minnesota.
That got to stay open, but yet churches were shut down.
You know, I was going to do a mask.
I got millions of masks that I would make for this thing.
I was going to have a church giveaway on Sunday morning.
I might do this if he keeps it up up there.
Sunday mornings, we'll make it a mass distribution center.
Everybody gets free masks.
And by the way, you can loiter and listen to somebody for two hours.
You know, what are they going to do?
All right.
Well, we are going to switch to our subscriber portion real quick.
If you're okay with that, we just do another about 15, 20 for our subscribers alone.
Take a quick little break.
I'd like to get into some.
I have some more ideas for your pillows.
Eric, I'm sure you're excited about it.
All right.
And talk maybe a little theology.
We're going to go to our 10 questions with you that we ask everybody.
Get ready.
Break.
Ready?
We're doing it.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
I'm going to do.
I believe 100%.
I do my due diligence and I'm not changing.
We heard you funded the movie Unplanned.
See, I didn't plan on that.
And that's my plan.
Have you ever considered making my pillow voting machines?
No, but I've considered.
That's a good idea.
By idea, Barnes.
Did you want a royalty on that?
Sure.
Enjoying this hard-hitting interview?
Become a Babylon Bee subscriber to hear the rest of this conversation.
Go to BabylonB.com slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.