Do you wake up feeling tired in the morning? Are those mornings ruined by phantom headaches,
a stiff neck, and "a tingly feeling" in your fingertips? If so, you may have spent one
too many sleepless nights watching MyPillow infomercials.
Who could blame you? After all, they're nearly impossible to avoid, as according to CNBC,
MyPillow creator Mike Lindell has spent more than $100 million on them. And it seems to
have paid off, as by 2017, MyPillow was reportedly raking in more than $300 million a year in
revenue.
But there's so much more to Lindell's story, like a record-breaking pillow fight, a battle
with the Better Business Bureau, and a bromance with President Donald Trump that runs so deep
that Lindell joined him in the nation's response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Switch
on the night light and slide on your reading glasses, because you won't get a good night's
sleep...until you discover the dark truth about the MyPillow commercial guy.
As the expression goes, Mike Lindell and Donald Trump are as thick as thieves. According to
Lindell's website, the two first met in 2016 and things quickly turned from business to
religion, with Lindell telling Trump that he was a "divine appointment."
Since then, Trump has publically shilled for MyPillow in his political speeches.
"First of all, he does make a great product. Great pillows. I actually use them, believe
it or not.”
Believe it or not!
And the president promoted Lindell and MyPillow again during, of all things, a Coronavirus
Task Force Briefing in the White House Rose Garden on March 30, 2020. So what was the
thought process here? Well, Lindell and other manufacturers have shifted their processes
to produce much-needed personal protective equipment in the effort to prevent the spread
of COVID-19, so Trump invited them to inform the nation of their efforts.
"My Pillow! Boy, do you sell those pillows. That's unbelievable, what you do."
Lindell did just that, followed by some "off the cuff" remarks in which he made it clear
that he believes Trump's election, much like the My Pillow design itself, was a result
of God's "grace."
"With our great president, and all the great people in this country praying daily, we will
get through this and get back to a place that's stronger and safer than ever."
But that's just the latest twist on Lindell's foray into the world of politics.
Mike Lindell, who was once dubbed President Donald Trump's "new best friend" by the Daily
News, isn't just a favorite among conservative TV pundits. He's apparently somewhat of a
ladies man, at least if you're reading the tabloids, which seem to be almost obsessed
with this bizarre detail about him. Apparently, the infomercial star was a hot ticket at Trump's
2017 inauguration festivities, and a headline from City Pages allegeing the pillow connoisseur
was the, quote, "hot stud ladies man" of the well-attended event. It's so sad to think
Mike Pence was glossed over for that title.
And Page Six unabashedly reported that ladies love the divorced former crack addict. The
report said that at the Empire State Inaugural Kickoff, women were swarming over the pillow
craftsman, despite the presence of conservative luminaries like Newt Gingrich and Jon Voight.
Lindell humble bragged to the tabloid,
"A lot of people recognize me from the MyPillow ads, and they often stop and ask for pictures.
It's a blessing."
Clearly, Lindell knows how to give the ladies what they really want: a good night's sleep.
But Lindell doesn't just hawk pricey pillows. The sleep guru has jumped into an entirely
new field: acting and filmmaking!
Yes, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lindell is officially a Hollywood financier,
funding his second feature film in 2018. But Lindell, whose net worth is estimated to be
around $300 million, has a strict code when choosing his projects. He told The Hollywood
Reporter,
"I don't get into things for the money; I get into them if the message is right."
So what's the right message? Well, it has a lot to do with pushing religion and right
wing political agendas.
Lindel's first foray into filmmaking was a film called Church People, which is a Christian
laugh fest headlined by notorious funnyman Stephen Baldwin.
Then, he dropped a cool $1 million funding a flick called Unplanned, which was a feature
length attack on Planned Parenthood, the organization that controversially offers disadvantaged
women affordable health care.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Unplanned was filmed secretly due to its content, and
Lindell put up one sixth of the total funding. He also reportedly made a cameo in the film
where he helps bulldoze a Planned Parenthood location in favor of a headquarters for an
anti-abortion group.
He told The Hollywood Reporter,
"I'm pro-life and I'm happy to do it."
So what's next for the budding mogul? Well, he's apparently planning to finance a film
based on his book What are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO, meaning that one glorious
day we're probably going to have a MyPillow guy biopic.
If there's one thing about clear Mike Lindell, it's that he sticks strongly to his convictions.
The pillowman was one of the few advertisers who did not pull their ads from Fox News pundit
Laura Ingraham's show after the conservative TV host publicly mocked high school shooting
survivor David Hogg.
According to The Los Angeles Times, it happened after Hogg, mentioned in an interview that
he didn't get accepted to four University of California schools. Ingraham, took to Twitter
to mock him. She tweeted,
"David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by
UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates)."
She apologized, but not before Hogg called for a boycott of Ingraham's show, and numerous
sponsors pulled their advertisements, including Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, TripAdvisor, Hulu,
and Expedia.
But not My Pillow! Lindell made it clear that he fully supported Ingraham and her decision
to publicly trash the young survivor. He tweeted his endorsement, saying,
"I did not take my advertising down from [The Ingraham Angle] and [Fox News], nor do I intend
to."
So how did we get here? Well, you can thank crack cocaine, because Lindell's story begins
exactly where you would expect: with a vial of pure rock.
Lindell founded MyPillow in 2004, but it was nearly derailed by his crack addiction. How
bad was it? He told Bloomberg that in 2008, his dealer actually staged an intervention.
"The one guy says, ‘Mike’s been up for fourteen days.’ He said ‘We’re shuttin’
you off, you’re not gettin’ anything.’”
Lindell said he eventually cleaned up his act on January 16th, 2009, when he reportedly
quit all substances after one last blowout. He told CNBC,
"I said, you know, ‘God I wanna wake up in the morning and never have the desire again
for this.’”
It worked. Amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you!
Fittingly enough, Lindell claims the idea for MyPillow came to him in a dream. He told
CNBC,
"I got up in the middle of the night, it was about 2 in the morning, and I had My Pillow
wrote everywhere, in the kitchen and all over the house.”
In a moment he vividly reenacted in a MyPillow commercial, Lindell claims one of his daughters
entered the kitchen that night and found her father working. He told her. "I've got this
idea for this pillow. It's gonna be called MyPillow!" All his daughter apparently said
was: "That's really random," and turned and headed back downstairs.
Sounds like a well-adjusted child. If we ever walked into the kitchen to find our father
scrawling "MyPillow" all over everything, we would scream.
After dropping out of college back in 1979, and being fired from a job at a supermarket,
Lindell struggled for decades, trying everything from raising pigs to becoming a professional
gambler. So it's no wonder he credits God with both the initial idea, and for the massive
success of MyPillow. He told CNBC,
"I look back now and I go, the only way that we were able to do that was divine intervention."
Lindell has tried to pay things back in numerous way, including staging the world's largest
pillow fight at an evangelistic meeting in Minnesota.
"Keep swinging it everybody, keep swinging it! WOOOOOOO!”
And he also co-founded LIGHTBEAMedia, a Christian production company that offers cinematic fare
such as Heaven, How I Got Here: A Night with the Thief on the Cross, which stars Baldwin
as a thief who dies on a crucifix several feet away from Jesus Christ.
"I did it, and it felt good. When a thief gets sloppy, a thief gets caught."
Back in 2014, an anonymous source posted an audio clip on YouTube that allegedly featured
Lindell ranting and dropping the f-bomb on several of his employees after an order of
150,000 pillows got botched. Lindell reportedly berated one employee, screaming
"Don't shake your f---ing head!"
Lindell's lawyers had the audio scrubbed from the internet, and Lindell told the Star Tribune
he suspected "two former employees and relatives" with a grudge leaked the audio. Some speculate
he may have been referring to relatives of his ex-wife, Dallas Yocum, who Lindell says
sent him packing with the words,
"I don't love you. I never loved you. You're boring."
"Shipping department!"
My Pillow is famous for its comfort guarantee:
"My Pillow, guaranteed the most comfortable pillow you’ll ever own or your money back."
What you'll no longer see in their advertising, though, are claims that the pillow will have
a positive influence on your health, ridding you of insomnia, restless leg syndrome, migraines,
snoring, sleep apnea, and fibromyalgia.
That's because MyPillow paid a $1 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the state
of California alleging "deceptive advertising practices" for making claims they "should
have known…were untrue or misleading."
"They don't care! They don’t care! They don’t care what you do!”
“They don’t give a rat's ass!"
Meanwhile, Truth in Advertising Executive Director Bonnie Patten sounds pretty certain
Lindell did plenty wrong:
"MyPillow was deceiving consumers into buying these expensive pillows thinking that it was
going to help their health conditions when he [Mike Lindell] had no science to back up
these claims."
That wasn't the only problem with their ads either. In January, 2017, MyPillow's "A+"
rating from the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota dropped to an "F."
The issue this time? An ongoing "buy one get one free" promotion where you didn't actually
get anything free.
"The Bureau's Barb Greeman says a pricing deal with no time limit is really just the
product’s regular price."
"There was one other thing too. If you look at Wal-Mart, if you look at Target, if you
look at Amazon, you can get a MyPillow for fifty bucks.”
“Right.”
“If you go to their website, it’s 89.”
For his part, Lindell denies there's anything shady about his shady practices, and claims
he's being persecuted because of his relationship with Donald Trump.
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