Mike Lindell recounts his 2016 political awakening after meeting Donald Trump at Trump Tower, detailing his recovery from a 20-year marriage and crack addiction to building MyPillow into a $300 million enterprise. He defends his business against a Better Business Bureau downgrade he attributes to political interference, claims President Trump uses MyPillow for better sleep, and endorses Doug Wardlow over Keith Ellison in Minnesota while promoting his faith-based recovery networks. Ultimately, Lindell urges conservative entrepreneurs to openly support Trump despite boycotts, arguing that factual economic improvements under the presidency outweigh potential backlash. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're talking, and we talked about the inner city, what I was going to do with my foundation, and what his plans were and his agenda to help the country.
And when I walked out of that room, I suppose it was a half hour, and all the amazing things he's talking about, I go, wow, this is going to be the best president in history.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, that's at the time.
He is for sure.
unidentified
Well, here, I walked out, and I didn't stop there.
I did my due diligence, and I went and checked out his employees, and all of his employees that I talked to, to this day, every one of them is like talking to one of my own employees.
They love him.
They've been with him for years.
He's the most amazing, fair, greatest boss ever.
So I'm going all in.
Well, I went all in, and I end up at the second, third debate.
I put my pillow, you know, myself on the line.
Of course, what happened then, and everybody, I told it, you know, I done a press release that I met with him.
Nobody, it was a complete shutout.
Nobody wanted it.
And then after he won, of course, then they all wanted to know, how do you know he was going to win?
So then, of course, all the press was after me.
Well, then, as you know, I was attacked, Better Business Bureau, A plus to an F rating over, you know, wanting me to take down my two-for-one ads.
They interviewed me on a radio station the other day and they said, are you, they said, yeah, Mike Lindell founded my pillow and he was used to be a Democrat.
And I got on there.
I said, no, I want to correct that.
I didn't find my pillow.
I invented my pillow and I was never a Democrat.
I was a crack cocaine addict.
I had no political whatsoever.
I actually like George W. Bush, the stuff I read his book.
I mean, that was as far as, you know, I didn't go vote.
I voted for Jesse Ventru when he was in Minnesota.
A lot of people voted for the first time there.
It was something different, but I never, I just wasn't political.
Like I say, I didn't know a liberal from a conservative from a Democrat to a Republican.
I didn't know that.
I was very naive to that.
unidentified
Yeah, and I was reading your story.
It's very inspirational and very just empowering because, like you said, you started out and you had drug addiction issues, and then now you have this huge business that's worth, well, you sell over $300 million worth of pillows and just an incredible business.
And, you know, it's very inspirational.
It really represents the American dream.
And so I was going to ask you, is that something that you see in President Donald Trump as really this embodiment of the American dream?
And that's why he can relate to people, you know, the common people.
It's like, and that's why my story of hope, I was sure I had my own adversity, but I also started, I had no money.
I had the pillow as an idea.
I got the idea in a dream from God.
And I went out and I was turned down everywhere.
I was turned down everywhere.
And someone said, well, Mike, why don't you do a kiosk?
I said, how do you spell that?
And I did this kiosk, and then, and that failed.
And I have this, with my addictions, my own addictions, I couldn't talk to people.
I would very much, I was either would show off or I would be very shy.
If I wouldn't have my drugs, I'd be, I lived in Las Vegas once for a month and a half for talk to people.
But what I did then, with my pillow, the guy had bought one from that kiosk, and he said, and this guy called me out.
He said, you guys invented this pillow here from Minnesota.
And I said, yeah.
He said, well, this pillow changed my life.
I run the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show.
Well, when I did that show, I was able to talk to people then because I had a table in front of me and they're coming out to me and I didn't need drugs behind that to do that.
So for seven years, I did shows, made them, you know, but I had a lot of adversity at 20, lost a 20-year marriage.
Everything went down.
I had drug dealers doing intervention on me.
I mean, I had all kinds of stuff happen.
And then I said, well, let's, and then I quit everything January 16, 2009, and overnight.
And then things started happening then, good things, but I still, my company was taken.
My copies have people copied out there and all these different things that happened.
But I said, let's do an infomercial.
If no one will take my pillow, let's do an infomercial.
And we ended up doing, you talk about the American Dream.
I said, I told my friends and family go, Come in, pull your money.
I said, we'll just bring it right to the public.
And well, the night before during the read, you know, we're doing our reads when this producer goes, he goes, this guy's the worst guy I've ever seen.
He'll never make it on TV.
Go ahead.
But he didn't tell me that.
And he's right the next day I had like nine takes on one line.
And so we took away the teleprompter and did it naturally with an audience and just did it.
I mean, your story and President Trump's story, it really shows people no matter where you are in your life, how old you are, how rich or poor you are, you can become a success story.
And all it takes is hard work.
And, you know, even for me myself, I've experienced some of those struggles because people are always telling me, you know, you're not going to make it.
I was invited to the White House in the summer of it was last summer 17 for the manufacturers summit for the Made In America and I walked in there and it was so surreal here's about 15 people around this thing and and I said you all got your names.
I said who's sitting here?
And they said the president is.
He wanted to sit by you and i'm going.
What you know?
It was surreal for me.
And they walked in and he, he did a whole like one-minute talk about, you know, my pillow and him having it.
He had bought some and he tried them and he said he loves them, he's getting great sleep and it was that's quite a quite a compliment.
unidentified
And because i'll tell you what that guy I don't know when he does sleep, but it needs to be quality, I know because he's always he's like me he goes to bed uh, really late.
I see him tweeting at three in the morning and then he's tweeting at five in the morning, at six in the morning, and I love president Trump, that's hard worker, he's hard worker, his work ethic.
You know it's just like I. Uh, you know it's amazing.
Yeah, my dad uses my pillow.
I actually bought my dad my pillows for his birthday two years ago and he was telling me because he saw that study in the news about how people were coming after you and because you called yourself a sleep expert and how they said, oh well, you can't say that the pillows are therapeutic and they help people, right?
But my dad's a doctor and he said that he used it and he has pain issues and he feels a lot better now and he recommends it to all his patients and they feel better when they use your pillow.
So he told me to tell you, to tell you that he signs off that it is medically approved, he recommends it to his patients.
Well, we just we just finished our sleep study there that this company did for us and they proved all these things, that you get sleep faster, stay asleep longer um, or you get these great sleep cycles um, snoring.
I mean 95 percent, this positional sleep apnea.
95 percent of the people had improved.
It was just an amazing study that i'll be all over the news now in the magazines that they uh, there's getting published right now, but i'm very proud of that because it validates what you know 40 million people know now.
Now I can get on tv and really say what my pillow does before.
unidentified
It's just the passion and and all the people it's helped and and um well, that's great.
It's going to be pretty amazing.
Well, focusing now on Minnesota, there's some Republican candidates who you've endorsed.
You have Doug Wardlow, who's running for attorney general against Keith Ellison, who's a really bad guy.
He's the deputy chair of the DMC and uh, you know, what would you say to Minnesota voters who are well looking to vote in the election on november 6th?
I don't just get behind someone because, like I say, I do my due diligence.
I put my name and my platform of trust out there, which is a big platform, and I uh, Doug's an amazing guy smart, the guy is so smart.
He um, he worked for this Christian organization that backs my Christian beliefs.
I mean, he's just, he's an amazing guy and he's the best one i've ever could ever see for Minnesota.
He's going to really be an amazing and I believe that um, from what i've heard from Ellerson to political, political politicize the position of Attorney General, and say you're going to go after the president.
Aren't you supposed to be helping us here in Minnesota?
I mean, I mean, I was just blown away by that.
And I kind of have a little fear about that because I've been very, you know, Doug's an amazing guy.
Vote for Doug.
Get out and vote.
unidentified
And my big concern, too, as a woman, is all these domestic abuse allegations against Keith Ellison and how you see the Democrats right now trying to weaponize the party against Brett Kavanaugh.
But they're completely ignoring the fact that Keith Ellison has multiple allegations of domestic abuse.
He supports Antifa, which our government has recognized as a domestic terrorist organization.
Antifa is always terrorizing Trump supporters and beating them up.
And you see Trump at rallies speaking out about Antifa.
So I don't want an attorney general.
And I don't know about you, but I don't think the people in Minnesota want an Attorney General.
I have the Lindale Foundation, I have the Lindell Recovery Network.
The foundation first, I'm bringing trust back into giving.
I'm taking private sector money where you see it home and you'll be able to pick whatever that square is, know that 100% of your money goes to that need.
And then you get to hear back a difference you made.
Where, you know, before it's like, are those really my kids?
Or did everybody have the same ones?
And how much of the money really goes to it?
And how much do their CEOs make?
I mean, we kind of know who ruined foundations and stuff.
And we need to bring that trust back.
And this will do it.
100% of the money goes to the need.
And you're picking the need.
And there'll be vetted needs, and there could be, you know, maybe it's homeless, whatever it is, whatever that need is.
I kind of reverse engineered, like I did my pillow, what a foundation should be.
You know, starts with trust.
You know, I trust that it's, you know, the Lindale Foundation.
Well, boy, it'd be great if 100% of my money could go to the need.
Yeah, it does.
Well, it's because I'm paying all the overhead over here.
And then the Lindale Recovery Network, that's going to be amazing where we're gathering stories right now of hope.
Imagine if you're on a website and you put in your age and your addiction.
So you put in, you know, 22-year-old opiate addict.
They might not, or heroin addict, they might not be able to relate to a 55-year-old meth addict.
But the closer you get to a match, so you put that in, and all these stories of your agent and that drug come down, and they've made it through.
And how did they make it through?
And all this, the stuff they've been through, so they can relate.
Now I'm like their tour guide on the website.
I'll go, you guys, you know, it's just like selling a pillow.
So I'm selling help and hope.
And I'll say, you guys, here's where to go here.
All these sinners that are all faith-based, your teen challenge, Union Gospel, Salvation Army, these are the ones that work.
I'm going to say, go over here, get your help.
And when they come out of that, they're going to have an app, an app that's going to, with these mentors that I'm going to be paying that are going to be, you know, I'll say, hey, don't worry, when you get out, we're right here for you.
And we're going to bring them through.
They'll have mentors.
And we're going to have jobs.
It's going to be one of the biggest employers in the country.
unidentified
You team up with Trump because he has this really big opiate program as well to counter the addiction issues in this country and the war on opiate crisis.
And the vice president, I told all about it, what I'm doing there.
So, yeah, I'm sure we will be combining.
Brag About Your Support00:04:10
unidentified
Looks good.
He's been busy.
What message or what piece of information or inspiration could you give to business owners who are conservative, but they're nervous to come out in support of President Trump?
I mean, everyone, let me tell you, even things that are over here on the left, you've got maybe, to me, it's 80 to 90 percent that are still supporting your business.
It's just that small voice that's loud and don't be afraid of those guys over there.
I did the Minnesota State Fair.
I was there this couple weeks ago, and I probably had, let's say, 500 to 700 people come up and personally pictures, talk to them.
Out of them, one person came up to me and said, all of them are going there.
They were coming up to me.
Oh, your pillow's great.
They're coming up to me.
Wow, you have an amazing transformation.
You found Jesus Christ and all this.
Or they're saying the other thing, they're saying, wow, Mike, thank you for supporting our president.
This is in Minnesota.
And they're going, you are guiding, by being so voiceless, they're able to go ahead and speak their mind that they've been instead of having to hide and be afraid of somebody attacking them.
Well, one guy came up and he goes, you know, I love what you're doing, but you're aligning yourself with the worst person ever.
And I go, really?
I've met the guy.
Have you met him?
And I start in, and he kind of ducked his head and snuck out the door.
He goes, maybe you're right.
Because everyone around him, and this is right in the heart of the, you know, in the heart of Minnesota.
So I think people, it's just like my Facebook.
When I started out back in the day, I would put a picture of me and the president up there, and I'd get, you know, like 10 likes just before the election.
You know, I'd have Rudy Giuliani or someone that I'd met, I've had there up there.
300 likes, 400 likes.
But he would give me small likes.
Well, throughout that cycle, now they're going, wow, Mike says it's okay.
So I would get more and more to the point of, you know, 400 likes, 500 likes.
And I only had to deface two people the whole time where, you know, two people from that whole cycle.
And you had, now I can put them up there.
I don't know how many I have on my Facebook, but every one of them, you know, there's no, they're all pro-Trump.
And people, it's like that, that's why he won.
But now for this midterm, everyone's got to get out.
But people, after he did win, the first few months, it was 100 days of Trump.
I was going on this tour.
And people were talking.
And I said, well, what can we do now?
What can we do?
I said, just keep them in your prayers, whatever.
Well, now I can say, now you can do something.
Get out, not just vote.
You better put it right out there, whether you're in business or whatever, and say, hey, look what it's doing, and brag about what he's done.
You need to get out there and brag about it.
Look at everybody, the lowest unemployment for black, kind of pro and Hispanic in history.
Minnesota here is the lowest.
We were way ahead of the curve before they started announcing this.
This is why it goes back two, three months.
I mean, out where my factory's at here in Minnesota and Scott County, I mean, everyone's now is finally paying people what I was paying people because we have careers at my bill.
Everyone's getting better pay too.
And I think businesses need to get out there and say, you know, we owe this to the most amazing president ever.