707 - Mike Lindell - part 2

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Speaker 2 You're listening to the dollop on the all things

Speaker 2 comedy network. This

Speaker 2 is an American history podcast where each week I read a story to a guy whose head is out of frame.

Speaker 2 Gareth Reynolds, you didn't say your name. Who has no idea what the topic is going to be? My head's not out of frame.

Speaker 2 It's not? Well, on my thing, it's.

Speaker 2 What? Oh, I see what's going on. Yeah, you know, you're right.
My bad. You stupid.

Speaker 2 A little bar came up. I apologize.
Your head's not. Well, if there's one thing I've learned about you and your dad, it's if a little bar comes up, look out.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's good to have a giggle with friends. Should you, of all people, be bringing up my father? Why not? Your dad was my dad.

Speaker 2 He's our dad. Your dad was our dad.

Speaker 2 Huh? You are

Speaker 2 the father slayer. In what way?

Speaker 2 You slay fathers. I love your father.
You slayed other people's.

Speaker 2 Are you with me? And there's a sect of us.

Speaker 2 We don't believe your dad's gone. There's a lot of

Speaker 2 this idea that your dad has.

Speaker 2 There are sightings

Speaker 2 of your dad

Speaker 2 in Roanoke, Virginia. And I have five guys working on it.
it, the Burger guys.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 there's a lot of smoke around the idea that your dad might not even be gone.

Speaker 2 So. You're very problematic.

Speaker 2 I want to reunite you and your dad.

Speaker 2 You're probably. You and your dad, it goes the order of reunions that I'm pining for are you and your dad and then you and Sam Cedar in that order.
And part of me,

Speaker 2 part of me wants the three of you to sit down.

Speaker 2 There was a big discussion on

Speaker 2 Reddit about

Speaker 2 Sam and I, our relationship, and everybody got it wrong about why I stopped talking to Sam, but it was very amusing.

Speaker 2 Because everybody always thinks they know.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 You think you killed your dad?

Speaker 2 2004,

Speaker 2 Year of Our Lord, J-Town,

Speaker 2 who, by the way, has been riding the subway cars in New York

Speaker 2 and having a good time. What do you mean? So he's just a passenger on subway cars?

Speaker 2 Mike! People know what that means if they actually read in the dangers to our young teens. Mike Lindell had woken up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2 and gone through

Speaker 2 a meth-like night of writing. Because of meth? And by that, I mean, he was just writing over and over again:

Speaker 2 I'm going to invent a pillow, and it's going to change the world.

Speaker 2 This is upsetting.

Speaker 2 And now

Speaker 2 he's going to do exactly that, and he is going to change the world. He became obsessed.

Speaker 2 His family almost immediately became sick of how much he talked about this. pillow thing

Speaker 2 so mike starts going to bed bath and beyond because you got to see the competition sure

Speaker 2 and he goes in there and he squeezes pillows for hours oh that's certain that's a there's surely a security camera zoomed in on him

Speaker 2 at some point was like this is this is beyond shopping

Speaker 2 this is the beyond

Speaker 2 problem this guy is

Speaker 2 he's making holes he's making holes that's very that's a lot of drug behavior there yeah

Speaker 2 so when the manager came over to ask if he needed any help, Mike replied, quote, nope, just doing some pillow research. Nope, I'm just trying to fondle as many pillows as I can.

Speaker 2 And the manager pointed Mike to some of their most popular pillows and Mike scoffed, quote, those pillows are awful.

Speaker 2 I'm going to come back someday with the best pillow you've ever seen, and you're going to sell them in your store one day.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't own this place. I'll probably be gone like four months.
So.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the manager smiled and nodded at Mike. Yeah.
Get out.

Speaker 2 Sure. Uh-huh.
Get out. I don't really care, sir.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 Mike made his son

Speaker 2 hand tear

Speaker 2 pieces of.

Speaker 2 I thought that was his name.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 but that would be a good name for a kid. Hand tear.
He made his son hand tear

Speaker 2 pieces of foam into a hundred different types of shapes

Speaker 2 in dozens of combinations until his hand ached

Speaker 2 and it took um it took months to finally find the right foam filling for the pillow

Speaker 2 these are different pillows he's having him do this to so he's got

Speaker 2 different shapes of foam so he's tearing little pieces of

Speaker 2 he's tearing the foam into little pieces

Speaker 2 then to figure out which pieces would be perfect to put in a pillowcase and make a pillow. I guess I've never shredded a pillow on uppers.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I've always been a guy who down pillow, fake down pillow, or the, you know, the just the little fiber, like foamy thing. I don't need little chunks.
I'm not a chunky. Is that what he's going for?

Speaker 2 Chunks?

Speaker 2 The pillows are chunky.

Speaker 2 You've never felt a my pillow pillow?

Speaker 2 I can't say that I have. They're awful.
It's awful. They're chunky.

Speaker 2 It's chunky. It's little pieces of chunky foam.
I would not know that.

Speaker 2 They're little bits of foam.

Speaker 2 Who knew?

Speaker 2 Remind me, is he on drugs now or is he off drugs? He's still on drugs. Why would he be off drugs? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
Thank you. You're right.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 his son is doing that. And then the next step is for Karen and Mike to go down to Biloxi, Mississippi to win enough money to make 250 pillows.

Speaker 2 Go gamble. Yeah, this whole

Speaker 2 Apple started.

Speaker 2 This whole gamble. Gamble your way to your dreams.
I mean, it is a flukie. No, but he's counting cards.
We got to remember he's a card counter.

Speaker 2 Thankfully, his luck turns around and he wins $14,000. And

Speaker 2 while he's doing it, he gets noticed by a group of card counters who ask him to join and be part of his team. So it's all good.

Speaker 2 The shortest. It's like the prestige, but with pillows and meth.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Mike makes the pillows. So he's got 250 pillows, and he enters the Eden Prairie Mall Show.

Speaker 2 Just a world, a world we never knew existed. It's one of the bigs.

Speaker 2 It was a disaster. Only a few people bought pillows, and one of them demanded Mike's phone number in case he didn't like the pillow.

Speaker 2 I think that guy's the biggest loser of the story.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you're wrong.

Speaker 2 Because that man ended up loving the pillow, Gareth.

Speaker 2 And he ran... the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show.

Speaker 2 So now he's got an in. Sure.

Speaker 2 And Mike changed his pitch to be a demo of how the pillow holds its shape while you use it and reconfigures when it's done. So

Speaker 2 it's made of all these different little pieces of foam in there, and you put your head on it and you squeeze it or whatever you do with it.

Speaker 2 And it holds its shape. And then when you're done with it, it doesn't have that little concave part in them that'll let something.
You don't need to fluff. You get off it, it pops right up.

Speaker 2 It's the beautiful pillow again. Sure.
You don't have to fluff it. Could you back away from your camera a little? Because you're pretty heavy.
This is how pillowy you should be. You get back.

Speaker 2 This is what people get back to be. This is why we pillow.
You get back right now. That's what we've always wanted to do.
You get back from your camera right now.

Speaker 2 That's crazy. People loved it.

Speaker 2 What you just did?

Speaker 2 All of it. What I did, what he did.

Speaker 2 Everybody loves the pillow.

Speaker 2 So he practically sells out $10,000 worth of product. Oh, boy.
That's a lot of meth.

Speaker 2 Quote, when I was demonstrating my pillow, the hours flew by. That's correct.
And I couldn't wait for the next day to start. I'd found a new drug.
Oh, my God. He replaced crack with pillows?

Speaker 2 Yes. What would you guess?

Speaker 2 And then he replaced pillows with Trump.

Speaker 2 Basically.

Speaker 2 But don't give it away. Yeah, right.
People don't know where this one goes.

Speaker 2 But he didn't give up on his old drug. He just found a new one.
He's still totally

Speaker 2 coke, like a

Speaker 2 crazy thing. And

Speaker 2 also crack. He's doing crack.
He's doing both. See, I don't know enough about it to know that those two, I feel like you pick a lane.

Speaker 2 You can do both. Well, of course you can, but I feel like you've got, whichever one you like better, who's got your affinity? You stick with that one.
Cool guys do both. That is a cool point.

Speaker 2 And the super cool add a pillow in.

Speaker 2 The one thing you don't need while you're cracked out of your teeth is something to fall asleep on

Speaker 2 that's right it's interesting it's an interesting it's an interesting invention for a crackhead to make

Speaker 2 a thing for sleep

Speaker 2 because he'd probably sleep on a wood table

Speaker 2 should we tell people the reason that the background looks like this if you're watching is because we're in the same hotel room in different rooms.

Speaker 2 We're in the same hotel that we got to and we got here and they said the elevator was broken. And they put us on the third floor.

Speaker 2 That's not great.

Speaker 2 So what did I do? I left a bunch of wilted spinach in the lobby. Yes, you did.
And then when I went down there, they were like, is this yours? And I was like, no.

Speaker 2 Did they? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was like, nah, I don't. What do you mean? Why would I leave that? I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 So one day Mike is driving through Wisconsin with a truck bed full of pillows stacked three feet higher than the cab and tied down with bungee cords. I've done this, not with pillows.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we all have. I've done it with squirrels.

Speaker 2 In the truck was a quote, large personal supply of cocaine.

Speaker 2 Because you're going to a pillow show. You got to,

Speaker 2 how are you going to get through it? You got to get your sales powder.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he notices that a helicopter has been tailing him for.

Speaker 2 are we really about to goodfellas my pillow?

Speaker 2 Well, paranoia kicks in.

Speaker 2 That's a real deal when you see a helicopter following you. And

Speaker 2 someone thought Mike was smuggling something over the Canadian border and called.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the feds did a comprehensive search of the truck, but all they found...

Speaker 2 were pillows.

Speaker 2 Because as soon as Mike realized there was a helicopter following him he snorted all of the cocaine quote I've seen good fellas

Speaker 2 well to be fair maybe he's seen good fellas but he's not he doesn't remember it super well because he flushed it down the toilet so that's right so the problem with this story he turned his nose into the toilet

Speaker 2 if you have a weekend full of cocaine and you snort it, they're going to be able to tell and you're not going to get away with that.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I kind of feel like Mike is so special and chosen that he could do it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, you might be right about that. God did clearly choose him.

Speaker 2 God gave him big nostrils.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he gets my pillow into the Minnesota State Fair. And that's hundreds of thousands of people we're talking about.
The big state fair. And there were

Speaker 2 huge lines just to look at one of those sweet, sweet pillows that he's made. Well, now we're really, now that's making Minnesota seem sad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, yeah.

Speaker 2 And the family makes tens of thousands of dollars a day during the fair. And my pillow sales tick up and up and up, but

Speaker 2 at the same time, so does Mike's gambling.

Speaker 2 And then he has a really bad football weekend, and he owes his bookie $20,000.

Speaker 2 And he

Speaker 2 had heard of a mob hotline, and you may have heard of this.

Speaker 2 It's a mob hotline where you pay five grand, and then they'll tell you which games are fixed. I've never heard of this.

Speaker 2 The mob hotline. Yeah, this is really, everybody knows about this.
It's a mob hotline.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so Mike

Speaker 2 does that, and he finds out that there's a college quarterback who's throwing a game.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all college quarterbacks are throwing a game.

Speaker 2 And he, no.

Speaker 2 Of course they're throwing. They're the quarterback.

Speaker 2 He's Gareth. All quarterbacks are throwing.
He's throwing the game. He's throwing the game.

Speaker 2 So Mike bets $25,000, which he doesn't have. He doesn't, you know.
Right.

Speaker 2 So he goes on a hunting trip that weekend and he's he's hunting and calling into a betting line for the score.

Speaker 2 And it's it's going well. The team he bet against is

Speaker 2 down by 28 points. So it's, you know, it's great.
Sure. But then it's 2814.
And then it's 2821.

Speaker 2 So Mike does something almost unprecedented with the mob. He called the manager of the mob hotline.

Speaker 2 Is there anything you want to flag? Well, that he's carrying the mob.

Speaker 2 I'd like to see the manager of the mob.

Speaker 2 And he yells. I don't think that's that's allowed

Speaker 2 and he yells quote what the hell is going on the mafia guy apologizes hey i'm so hey i'm so sorry what do you want me to do uh you know the guy we you know okay

Speaker 2 so this is what happened the mafia man apologizes and said the starting the bribed qb the starting qb broke his arm and the new qb is not in on the deal

Speaker 2 sure well that's sorry what you don't expect when you call i mean you call hotline you expect you don't expect them to like be on their heels yeah whoa whoa sorry we're sorry we're sorry look we got a bunch of stuff we're fixing we're sorry i apologize i apologize pillow man that was terrible

Speaker 2 how about this how about i break my legs we're gonna shoot the new qb

Speaker 2 So the other team wins. Mike loses.
Mike lost a game that was fixed.

Speaker 2 He's maybe the unluckiest. I don't know about that.
Gareth, he's now down $50,000. You know what's weird? It seemed like he was starting to find himself with the pillows.

Speaker 2 But he also just isn't. Yeah, I know.
He's a real,

Speaker 2 he's got such an addictive personality.

Speaker 2 He can't stop. No.

Speaker 2 So his bookie lets him pay it off on a payment program

Speaker 2 if Mike promises to never bet on sports again

Speaker 2 so that's nice

Speaker 2 that makes sense i that's what bookies do okay i don't really it's a classic bookie thing sure

Speaker 2 yeah sure

Speaker 2 he was so bad at betting that the bookie gave him an intervention that's what we're saying the bookie what is i don't think it's a bookie

Speaker 2 Well, this is what it is.

Speaker 2 I don't think so. Any bookie that is just like, look, we're sorry, we fucked up.
Here, let me help you out, okay?

Speaker 2 No interest rate. We'll give you a payment plan.
It'll work great. Mike,

Speaker 2 we're all very worried about you.

Speaker 2 Me,

Speaker 2 Tony the Laces, Vicki the Stabs.

Speaker 2 I just wish you'd get your shit together, Mike. You got such potential and your pillows are guys.
They're so nice. I love the idea that it's a chowder little pieces.

Speaker 2 Mike, we need you in the pillow game, not the sports game. Vito game.
Vito has something he'd like to read. Mike, look,

Speaker 2 you've been an unbelievable gambler. Take this moment and write it out.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, Mike, if you keep gambling, I will not be able to be your bookie any longer.

Speaker 2 I'm creating my own bottom.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Mike claims that after the bookie mob intervention, he hasn't bet on a game since.

Speaker 2 It's so hard. It would be great to put him under truth serum.
Oh, my God. It's so clearly fake that I...

Speaker 2 Like, of course, like,

Speaker 2 the whole Christian, like...

Speaker 2 Sort of circuit of redemption is always just this amazing amount of bullshit. But this is like

Speaker 2 bullshit.

Speaker 2 It's really crazy.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Mike and Karen have an annual Mexico trip that they do.

Speaker 2 I can't believe her name's actually Karen. It's so good, fellas.
Karen.

Speaker 2 So he doesn't cancel that because of what's going on. He's like, we need quiet time.
We need time together.

Speaker 2 And quote, a Mexican drug dealer promised him an unlimited supply of cocaine because that happens if you're a pillow guy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So they went another, with another couple for about a week, and he

Speaker 2 just thought about the cocaine and couldn't wait to meet up with his, quote, Coke-promising dealer, a Mexican we called the Greek. Right.

Speaker 2 Great true story.

Speaker 2 A year earlier, he, quote, blundered into a situation that pitted rival dealers against each other I barely escaped my life but the incident turned out well for the Greek now in return he handed over a few baggies of coke there you go so weird there you go the the goodwill that this community has is shocking

Speaker 2 yeah I mean it's weird how many like criminal guys

Speaker 2 are so nice I keep I bring up Forrest Gump too much, but this is like the gumpy retelling of being a Coke crack addict. It really is.
It really is.

Speaker 2 because listen to this blundered into a situation that pitted rival dealers against each other i barely escaped with my life but it turned out well for the greek so he handed over a few baggie baggies yeah that's just not how it works

Speaker 2 no and also why would he give you coke like you what's i mean like why would he like the greek would be like yeah fuck you

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 but this wasn't the unlimited supply he was promised but you know it got the party started so well, that's the one thing about cocaine. It's easy to ration.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 2 So, these four middle-aged Minnesotans are just doing lines and drinking coronas for a few days, but the supply is getting low. And Mike thinks he has one baggie left, but he cannot find the baggie.

Speaker 2 And he's looking everywhere. No Coke.

Speaker 2 Have you ever gone through that?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I've done that where I've been like, there's a bag, but there is Coke somewhere.
And you've done it.

Speaker 2 He tears the whole room apart.

Speaker 2 His wife and friends want a part of this, and they go to the other room to drink and have fun. If I was

Speaker 2 sorry, but if this was my origin story, this is where I would tear the pillow apart. And I was looking for Coke, so I tore the pillow apart into a thousand different pieces.

Speaker 2 And when I put it back in there, and I laid on it, and I went, that's the comfiest pillow I've ever slept on.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that would be really good. Just stabbing it with a knife, and then he's like, oh, my,

Speaker 2 that reached formed as as soon as I got up. Pillow should be in little parts.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 2 So he goes out looking for Coke. It's 1 a.m.
And he's power walking in the resort zone and he heads into the shadier area

Speaker 2 and he goes into this like little shack in a convenience store of a comedian store. And there's a man standing outside.
And he asks Mike how he's doing. And Mike says, do you have any cocaine?

Speaker 2 Well, he does. He does have cocaine, it turns out.

Speaker 2 So Mike sat and had a beer with the man. And then there's two other guys there also.

Speaker 2 He gave him $100.

Speaker 2 And now the third man has a gun. And then the second guy has something covered in a towel, like a long thing covered in a towel.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the first man keeps asking questions, quote, why didn't you buy from a taxi?

Speaker 2 What hotel are you staying at? Mike lies and said, It's not the one he's at. Where's your wristband?

Speaker 2 We didn't get an all-inclusive package for the resort.

Speaker 2 And the man finally dropped the act and said, You don't like the police, do you? And Mike jammed his nose into the dealer's face and pointed at white flecks of coke in his mustache.

Speaker 2 Do I look like a cop to you?

Speaker 2 Getting intense.

Speaker 2 the pillow movie it really is

Speaker 2 it's so weird to know this guy from the pillow commercials only right right yeah to to to have this this intensity of the pillow guy yeah because he on the pillow he's saying he's wearing the biggest cross ever and he's like i did everything i could to make sure that my pillows were perfect for you And I was like, oh, sweet pillow man.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 the man said something that made Mike very concerned, quote, you look very familiar. Have you ever been here before? You look like a gringo from last year.
He was with some enemies of ours.

Speaker 2 So he's talking about the deal that Mike stumbled into. Oh.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's a little tense, Gareth. The man.

Speaker 2 So the man at Crayley Beyon on the losing side of the clash with the rival drug gangs, which Mike never actually explains in the book. He just kind of says, I stumble.

Speaker 2 He never goes into any detail about that.

Speaker 2 What is essentially a crazy event that you would definitely put in a book?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Mike is keeping up this like aggrieved guy bit. And Mike, as if he's pissed, said, Why don't you just give me the cocaine? My wife is really going to be upset that I'm not back yet.

Speaker 2 So they waited another 10 minutes. And Mike asked if the Coke is coming from a specific town.

Speaker 2 Quote, that was a huge mistake. The name of the town wasn't something I should have known if I'd never been there.

Speaker 2 So, the men leaped to their feet, surrounding me. In one motion, the second man unsheathed the mysterious object and pressed it against my throat.
It was

Speaker 2 a machete. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Are you scared? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, Mike

Speaker 2 summons

Speaker 2 courage or the cocaine. The what yes cocaine for de Coke binge

Speaker 2 quote, what's the matter with you? I'm not buying a sword. I'm here to buy cocaine.
And

Speaker 2 you keep saying it's coming, but it's still not here.

Speaker 2 He wrote this in a book.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 2 Surely you could do better than that in a book.

Speaker 2 It's really tremendous. Like it feels like the book is really made up and invented in many parts.
Like why would this, why would he and I have a better line?

Speaker 2 So I pretended that I was there to buy the machete.

Speaker 2 And then they all busted a gut and we had waffles.

Speaker 2 Well, and then the Mexican dude responds, and this is like straight out of an episode, he's bounded down, quote,

Speaker 2 you seem a little loco, senor. He doesn't want to sell you his machete.
He wants to cut off your head. Yeah, this is crazy.
This is loco.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 fake that it's just bewildering. Yes.

Speaker 2 And Mike says, cut off my head. My wife would have been really upset if you did that.
Come on, guys. You know I'm here to buy cocaine.

Speaker 2 I'm out of Coke, and I came all the way out here to buy from you guys. And this is how you treat me.
And that calms everything down. No.

Speaker 2 Yes. No.

Speaker 2 This is all

Speaker 2 there's video. They want money.
There's video.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they would have killed him.

Speaker 2 So that calms everyone down.

Speaker 2 And one asks Mike for a smoke. And as he pulls it out, the missing bag of Coke starts to come out with it.
It was in his fucking pocket, Gareth. It's not crazy.
So that's the most realistic part.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 That would make him bad.

Speaker 2 What? That would not make him seem like a cop. What a fucking idiot.

Speaker 2 Gareth, cops have cocaine in bags in their pockets with the cigarettes. Wait a minute.
He does does have Coke. He is a cop.

Speaker 2 Right? Wait.

Speaker 2 What do we... I don't know.

Speaker 2 Quote, I felt a sudden sadness.

Speaker 2 This is where my addictions and bad decisions had led me. Jesus Christ.
Shut the fuck up.

Speaker 2 This guy sucks.

Speaker 2 This guy.

Speaker 2 He's so bad at this. Who makes being a cokehead this boring?

Speaker 2 God, he's just such a fucking bore. Like, he's not a loser because of his addictions.
He's a loser because he's like, midway through a Coke bender, he just found more Coke,

Speaker 2 which is striking oil. He's probably about to get other Coke.
And he's like, wait, this is where... That's tomorrow thinking.
Yeah, that's tomorrow. That's not today thinking.

Speaker 2 No, you're not thinking about when you're about to score.

Speaker 2 No. No, no.

Speaker 2 I have way better Coke stories than this.

Speaker 2 It was ridiculous. I thought about it.
All my decades of scheming and groveling to get that white powder, only to lose everything to it in the end.

Speaker 2 All that time thinking I was so smart I would beat the odds. But now the game was over.
The house had won. I was going to die right here.
You just got more Coke in here.

Speaker 2 I was going to die right here on this dark, deserted street. A small item in the news, American tourist goes missing in Mexico.

Speaker 2 It's intense.

Speaker 2 I don't think we'd even hear about him.

Speaker 2 You can really feel it.

Speaker 2 If you're,

Speaker 2 say, like a person out in rural Wisconsin and you read this and you've never done cocaine or really any drug and you've just kind of lived a very, live a very wholesome life, this sounds crazy.

Speaker 2 Impossible.

Speaker 2 But somehow, Mike uses an amazing sleight of hand to pocket the Coke before he handed over the smoke. Like he's a magician, Gareth.
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 So they don't see the extra baggie. Mike is shook death.
Once again, he's escaped death.

Speaker 2 And then the Cokey ordered arrives.

Speaker 2 He's so bad. Okay.

Speaker 2 He could barely get back to the hotel without snorting at a big old honker. Yeah, okay, good.

Speaker 2 So when he gets back to the States,

Speaker 2 he is in Milwaukee for a show

Speaker 2 and he's right back out. Surprise Shank Hall.

Speaker 2 I made a series of addict moves that ended with me surrendering my wedding ring to one thug and when some guy pulled a pistol from a Frito's bag and pointed at my head,

Speaker 2 my truck to another. My truck to another? Does that mean by 5 a.m., I was being held captive in a hotel room.
It's all a blur now, but somehow I got everything back.

Speaker 2 And somewhere in there, I I got my crack. It was always about the crack.
What a great writer.

Speaker 2 What a great writer. Just leave that as a fucking old memory.

Speaker 2 I don't remember anything, and I got it all back. Mike Lindell.

Speaker 2 But now, Gareth, crack is breaking apart the marriage.

Speaker 2 Karen is also doing crack, but now

Speaker 2 they're not doing crack.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 2 And they accuse each other of hiding crack and holding out on each other. Sure.
And as their kids are growing up, it's harder to hide the habit, the Coke habit.

Speaker 2 Like Mike would dip out during baseball games for a half hour to do lines off gross outdoor metal toilets. Oof, those kind of stuff.
Oof.

Speaker 2 Of all the toilets that bang Gak off. Yeah, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're definitely snorting a lot of urine, just dried old urine.

Speaker 2 Karen started spending a lot of time with her friend Steve, and it got to the point where on Karen's 50th birthday, Steve hosted the after party.

Speaker 2 And near the end of the night, when Mike said it was time to go, Karen just told him she was going to stay with Steve that night. I mean,

Speaker 2 you should know something's going on where a man is hosting the after party.

Speaker 2 Wait, what? And then after the other birthday, we're doing Karen Afterdark.

Speaker 2 Hosted by Steve.

Speaker 2 All right, Karen, let's go. No, I'm going to stay here with Steve.
Well, it's pretty fucking feels like an affair.

Speaker 2 It's not a fair. He's just fucking me.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 So Mike goes home that night and screams at his kids until they left. And then he locked himself in the office and smoked a bunch of crack.

Speaker 2 I got to tell you. In that situation.
I love this era of his life because it pretty much always ends with he smoked crack.

Speaker 2 Everything. Like every chapter is just like, so I didn't know what to do.
So I just smoked a bunch of crack.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Karen comes home the next day and she finds out what happened and she packs.

Speaker 2 She just smoked a bunch of crack. She's somehow mad at him.

Speaker 2 Yelling at the kid. Yeah, and chasing the kids out, even though she was fucking Steve.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Whatever.

Speaker 2 She packs a bag. She moves into Steve's.
Just about the exact same time, the power company cuts off the electricity.

Speaker 2 Now, remember, remember the pillow?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they've sold hundreds of thousands of pillows. Like, they've just

Speaker 2 he's, yeah.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 Mike goes to Steve three times.

Speaker 2 Twice, he punched through a window, and once he punched Steve, okay.

Speaker 2 Three weeks later, Karen divorces him. Okay, soon after, Mike somehow buys a new house.
Now, this is subprime mortgage boom time, so

Speaker 2 very possible.

Speaker 2 And he moves in with a woman named Rachel. Okay.

Speaker 2 And he leaves his kids at the old house because he didn't want...

Speaker 2 No, he, yeah, but he must have gotten the power turned back on, but he didn't want them to see that he was now a, quote, full-blown crackhead.

Speaker 2 I got, I got news for Mike Lindell. Yeah, right? They probably know you're a crackhead.
Yeah, they probably, they probably. There's been some clues.

Speaker 2 All the crack, all the yelling about crack, all the fighting about crack, all the crack, crack.

Speaker 2 The crack, crack, crack, the smell of the crack. Crack, the crack stop.
Crack laying around, the cocaine around your nose.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of crack.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he and Rachel have some big crack-fueled fights, and then she moves out.

Speaker 2 Now Mike's sad. He stops working, eating.
He even stops doing crack. He's just sad.
I'm so sad. I can't even smoke crack crack anymore hey man here's the craziest part of the whole story

Speaker 2 he says a doctor did a house call

Speaker 2 what what what what do you mean

Speaker 2 for what

Speaker 2 because he's in such bad shape the doctor was like you should probably do a little more crack yeah i would smoke more crack get going um the doctor said he was in a quote walking coma where your brain has had so much trauma that it shuts down.

Speaker 2 See, that's the doctor who shows up to the house.

Speaker 2 You're in a coma, you're waking coma.

Speaker 2 Sometimes he would go to the bathroom and sometimes he took slips of water from the sink, but that was it. Nothing would snap him out of it.

Speaker 2 Until a friend,

Speaker 2 a friend

Speaker 2 dying of stomach cancer,

Speaker 2 leaves his like healthcare situation that he's in and brings Mike a tub of chocolate-covered popcorn.

Speaker 2 This story has so many moments of like, and then it happened.

Speaker 2 And then he just goes back to Smoking Crack. And then he goes back to Smoke and Crack, yeah.
But this one, the guy brings up chocolate-covered popcorn. And that snapped Mike out of it.

Speaker 2 What? Hello? Yeah, I know. I'm just like pissed.

Speaker 2 The popcorn snack snapped him out of his walking coma.

Speaker 2 I'll repeat, what?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 this is now an established medical thing. They've done a lot of research.
I'm going to give you a little chocolate-covered popcorn. That'll get you right out of this.

Speaker 2 It was touch-and-go until we gave him chocolate-covered popcorn.

Speaker 2 Gareth,

Speaker 2 his business phone rings. His business phone?

Speaker 2 This is right after he snaps out of it. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 Right after the chocolate popcorn. And a woman.
I'm the president of betting

Speaker 2 says, quote,

Speaker 2 I don't want to buy a pillow right now, but I was praying. And God let me know

Speaker 2 that what you're doing is so important,

Speaker 2 you can't give up.

Speaker 2 Who's this? Hello, who's this? It's a woman. It's a

Speaker 2 woman.

Speaker 2 Who's this? I'm a praying woman.

Speaker 2 A prayer, prayer, a woman who prays.

Speaker 2 She keeps talking. Good.

Speaker 2 And then she started praying for him while Mike did lines of Coke on mute. You definitely got to mute.

Speaker 2 An hour and a half later, the phone rings again.

Speaker 2 Quote.

Speaker 2 God's called me to pray for you. What you're doing is very important and you can't give up.

Speaker 2 this is intense this is intense yeah no this is some real

Speaker 2 i don't know about that part but it's definitely intense 3 a.m the phone rings again this time it's a guy quote were you talking to my wife earlier you piece of

Speaker 2 let me tell you something pal i don't believe in god

Speaker 2 but i kept having a dream that I am supposed to call you

Speaker 2 and tell

Speaker 2 you that what you're doing is important to God.

Speaker 2 I hope these dreams stop now, you asshole.

Speaker 2 This is intense. It's a nightmare.
This is like the three

Speaker 2 ghosts who go to visit.

Speaker 2 No, it isn't.

Speaker 2 It's exactly like that. It isn't because it's three people calling on the same timeline.
It might be a little more intense, actually. Don't agree.

Speaker 2 I really, I've not liked Mike Mendel, like Mike Lindell for this whole thing. I hate him now.
Now I hate him.

Speaker 2 I hate him because of his body.

Speaker 2 Because he was visited by Christ. No, he wasn't.
That's not even what this said.

Speaker 2 The phone rings again at 8 a.m.

Speaker 2 And Mike answers. Hello?

Speaker 2 Quote, let me guess. You don't want to order a pillow? You want to pray? And the woman on the phone said,

Speaker 2 How did you know?

Speaker 2 How did he know?

Speaker 2 Because he made it up.

Speaker 2 Gareth, because the message of God was getting into him at this point. He made it all up.

Speaker 2 At 11 a.m.,

Speaker 2 the phone

Speaker 2 he only used for internet access,

Speaker 2 which is attached to an answering machine at this point, rings.

Speaker 2 And there was a robotic woman's voice. Hello.
I love your pillows. I am here on behalf of God.

Speaker 2 Mike, this is a message from God. Everything you've experienced in your life will give you strength to get through the next month.

Speaker 2 Holy fuck. This guy is really disturbing.

Speaker 2 This is quite a night.

Speaker 2 It's one thing to have this happen, quote unquote, to you. It's another thing to be like, this is my book.

Speaker 2 This is intense, right? Like, he really believes himself. He fancies himself important.

Speaker 2 Later that day, Mike got into a fight with his girlfriend, Rachel, and she called the cops and they came to arrest him.

Speaker 2 It'd be great if one of those phone calls, he's like, let me guess, you'd like to talk about my pillows and God are like, no, it's just Frank Scherber.

Speaker 2 We're about to break your door down unless you actually give yourself up. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 Well, Mike stole her car and fled to Minneapolis.

Speaker 2 It's fucking hilarious that on the day when you get four phone calls about how God sent people to call you because of your pillow, you're also doing grand theft auto.

Speaker 2 Well, he had a reason. He just didn't steal the car.
He had a purpose. Oh, he's on a mission.

Speaker 2 He was going to find his crack dealer.

Speaker 2 Quote.

Speaker 2 He might scare you if you ran.

Speaker 2 He might scare you if you ran into him alone on a dark street, but he really was the nicest guy.

Speaker 2 So all these people are calling, telling him that he's the chosen pillow daddy.

Speaker 2 And that same day, he steals a car to go get crack.

Speaker 2 Well, no, he wants to meet up with his crack dealer, who's a nice guy. To get crack.

Speaker 2 And to talk about stuff, probably. Sure.

Speaker 2 Emotional connection. Can I walk you through some fall pillow options?

Speaker 2 So, Gareth, Mike does crack without sleeping for two weeks straight. Good.
Good. And on the 14th day, two higher, high, high-up-level dealers show up.

Speaker 2 The apostles. And one said, quote,

Speaker 2 Mike, you need to go to bed. We're cutting you off.
This is just not how drug dealers

Speaker 2 work. Dealers do.
This is exactly what they do. No.

Speaker 2 This is exactly what they do. The mob, the mob doesn't allow an intervention for you, and drug dealers don't suggest and insist you quit drugs.

Speaker 2 This is what life is like out there. This is just terrible.

Speaker 2 It's just crazy.

Speaker 2 He said,

Speaker 2 he told Mike he would wait Mike out.

Speaker 2 He did let Mike finish his last little bit of Coke,

Speaker 2 and then he sat with him. He's going to, you know, make him get sober, but then the dealer fell asleep and Mike snuck out.
Oh, he probably had one of those lovely pillows.

Speaker 2 Why wouldn't he do that? In this bullshit, why wouldn't he bring a pillow with him and be like,

Speaker 2 I wish I got one crack at punching this book up?

Speaker 2 I'd be like, I took my pillow down there, and it was like, as he was like trying to wait it out, he fell asleep on the pillow meant on like the single layer Dow comforting pillow. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 2 So Mike's out on the street looking to buy.

Speaker 2 He's begging. He's pleading.
He's offering to pick double. Is it possible for me to suck your dick for a crack crack? Didn't I pie a pillow off of you? Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2 Gareth Nono sell to him. Word is out.
Yeah. Mike's on the no-fly list.

Speaker 2 He's not allowed to buy how it it works this is what happens this is how it went when the when the crack dealers decide they're gonna help someone they all get to head tell you what they're quite a community

Speaker 2 so he said his come down was the worst of his life uh he was on sleeping on a floor for two days

Speaker 2 and then after two days has a pillow empire essentially

Speaker 2 And he's just

Speaker 2 sitting out on rugs.

Speaker 2 He bolts up and he is like, oh my God, I'm supposed to turn in a signed contract to a wholesaler for my pillow or it's going to ruin the company if I don't. And I have to do it today.

Speaker 2 So he rushes to his facility office, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, there's a cop there waiting for him. And Mike's like,

Speaker 2 I just have to hand deliver this contract. And if I don't, quote, it's going to change the course of history.

Speaker 2 My pillow is a platform for something so important in the future, something to do with God.

Speaker 2 So the cop lets him because you can't get in the way of that. It sounds like they were just doing a windy city heat on him.

Speaker 2 Like the way this plays out, like for him to go up to a cop, be like, you don't understand. I have to do this to save the future of betting.
And the cop's like,

Speaker 2 all right.

Speaker 2 So after this, Mike goes into a year-long spiral. He loses his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. Dave, he's only been on a spiral.
It just started. His friends,

Speaker 2 it's just starting. His brother, his son moves out.

Speaker 2 Pretty much everything that ever was. This story keeps having these moments where he's like, but then Mike went and made the delivery of the contract.

Speaker 2 And then Mike went to rock bottom. But what, like, then Mike got chocolate-covered popcorn.
And then Mike smoked a bunch of crack.

Speaker 2 But then the mob told Mike they weren't going to let him do any more gambling. Mike did more gambling and started to smoke a lot of crack.
And then he punched his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 Pretty much everyone and everything that he's ever loved just stopped putting up with all his crackhead shit.

Speaker 2 And eventually, in the beginning of 2009, in 2009, he lost the money to keep my pillow going.

Speaker 2 2009.

Speaker 2 So he loses the money to keep my pillow going, and everything just kind of grounds to a halt.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that to him is like his platform for God

Speaker 2 via pillows. Well, he really abused it.

Speaker 2 So that's what drives him to quit, finally.

Speaker 2 Quit drugs. Finally.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he just quit.

Speaker 2 No struggle, no traumatic episode. He just woke up in the morning and didn't want to do booze or crack.
And that was it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 He's not even... He's such a bad writer.
He didn't take a look at the public.

Speaker 2 He couldn't just make that the one.

Speaker 2 Because he made so many of them, and they were all so insane that now he needs a big one. And he's like, I got it.

Speaker 2 Who published his book?

Speaker 2 I bet it's self-published. It has to be self-published.
Look it up. Look it up.
What's it called?

Speaker 2 Fuck, I care about it. All right, here I got it.
Hold on.

Speaker 2 You can keep reading.

Speaker 2 So he moves into his sister's place and he starts going to church.

Speaker 2 Lindell Publishing.

Speaker 2 There you go. Lindell Publishing.

Speaker 2 And he's the narrator for the audio book.

Speaker 2 Oh, that has to be fucking incredible.

Speaker 2 That has to be. And there I was, eating

Speaker 2 So he loves church. He's loving it.
Good. Good for him.

Speaker 2 And then his personal life starts to take off.

Speaker 2 But the business, but the business is not going well. There's two investors, and they're trying to take the company away from Mark because

Speaker 2 he's been a crack addict. Yeah.
And they wanted a company not run by a crack addict. Right.

Speaker 2 And Mike miraculously gets $30,000 to fight back. How? Who? I don't know.
Okay, there you go. Don't worry about it.
Why not? Okay, great. Good.
Thanks, buddy.

Speaker 2 Some things aren't important. So the two parties were going to the same shows and competing with the same pillows.

Speaker 2 And the investors were going after him, low blows.

Speaker 2 Once, as Mike walked by, One guy worked the mic like a carnival barker, quote, hey, everyone, there's Mike Lindela, my pillow.

Speaker 2 We've sold thousands and thousands of pillows, but Mike ruined his business because he's a meth addict. And Mike yelled, quote, it was crack.
Get it right. Wow.
Good comeback, Mike. Way to go.
Smooth.

Speaker 2 It was actually a harsher drug.

Speaker 2 They filed a false police report.

Speaker 2 They claimed Mike had come to their booth to harass and intimidate them. But

Speaker 2 luckily, Mike had a credit card, timestamp, at the exact time that they said he was at their table,

Speaker 2 saying he was at his table, so they lied.

Speaker 2 They told everyone Mike was a filthy addict, couldn't be trusted. That's true.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're the good guys in this story. Well, I mean, they're certainly not the best.
Mike, you certainly are.

Speaker 2 They're not speaking out of class.

Speaker 2 No. They're allowed to say that.

Speaker 2 Instead of fighting back, Mike leaned in and made his crack addiction part of the my pillow brand that is a crazy thing to hear

Speaker 2 in a christian redemption sort of way and people ate it up and he buried those two investors

Speaker 2 well so they were like they were like

Speaker 2 outing him for being a crack addict which is totally fine i mean that's what he was

Speaker 2 And then he's like,

Speaker 2 I'll just run with that. Oh, you're right.
I am a crack addict. Everyone's like, this is awesome.

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Speaker 2 Now, two events would change everything for Mike.

Speaker 2 First, a quote, skinny long-haired cowboy, grizzled with years, told millions that my pillow was one of the best inventions in history on par with fire and the wheel. That's fucking amazing.

Speaker 2 That was

Speaker 2 Don Imis.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Oh, Christ.

Speaker 2 Some old, weird racist.

Speaker 2 Oh, let me tell you, this is actually one of those. That was one of those unbelievable pillows I ever put my head on.

Speaker 2 These are uh

Speaker 2 now, I granted I've said the N-word on air a couple times, but

Speaker 2 those pillows were remarkable. Okay, you're gonna fall asleep on the pillow.

Speaker 2 I gotta tell you, I love this guy's story. This guy, he's a uh

Speaker 2 hi, he had a meth head. Okay, so here's a big meth guy, he's fucking crack, and he somehow came up with one of the greatest things you can ever sleep on, okay.

Speaker 2 And then the other thing that really helped, the big, big, big event,

Speaker 2 he did an infomercial. My pillow was one of the most successful infomercials in history.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so scales, sales just skyrocket, and the company goes from 20 employees to 500 in under a few months. I hate this because it's like so simple.
He got an infomercial.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And now he's like, I should be, let me tell you who should be president.
I talk to God.

Speaker 2 Mike was literally hiring guys off bar stools. He gave ex-con

Speaker 2 prisoners,

Speaker 2 low lives, and deadbeats a second chance. He hired a hot

Speaker 2 black jack dealer to be his executive assistant. He's definitely.

Speaker 2 Both, this is all because he's still doing all of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He's surrounding himself by, yeah, he's surrounding himself with people who can just get him crack easy and like we'll let him gamble.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he hires this hot black jack dealer to be his executive assistant and then marries her within a month.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I will try to find the email, but I'm pretty sure someone sent me an email this week that said

Speaker 2 that someone in their family worked at one of his companies and it was a fucking nightmare because of all the people that worked there. Oh, I can only imagine.

Speaker 2 Well, he actually has no real CEO experience. Not that you need to have that, but the only thing he's been running is from the cops.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 His sister Cindy

Speaker 2 meets a woman at a Christian conference. I'm looking at his wife.

Speaker 2 She just goes up to Cindy and said, quote, hi, I'm Kendra. I don't know why, but God wants us to keep in touch.
Oh, my God. And that happens.
That's normal.

Speaker 2 Look, look, look, look.

Speaker 2 That's normal. Crazy people hear God in that way.

Speaker 2 You're allowed to believe. You're allowed to pray.
You're allowed to have all that. It's great.
Good for you. Enjoy it.

Speaker 2 But you're not allowed to be like, so God said I have to come over here and say hi.

Speaker 2 That's where it's like, what? What are you doing?

Speaker 2 You're on crack. Well,

Speaker 2 you're not Cindy, buddy, because Cindy immediately knew this is the lady for Mike.

Speaker 2 Now I remember Mike just married the blackjack dealer. Well, here's the funny thing about that, Gareth.
It only lasted 20 days. Now, who was this that he was married to?

Speaker 2 A blackjack dealer. What was her name?

Speaker 2 Oh, we don't know. Okay.

Speaker 2 She said she wasn't in love with him, quote, also, you're boring.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Just to push back, if there's one thing Mike Lindell is not, it's boring.

Speaker 2 I don't know. I think he's all of the above.
He's crazy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He's crazy, not boring.

Speaker 2 No, I don't. I think he's boring.
I think that he is a combination of boring and crazy. Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 2 So he needs money. My pillow is bringing in millions, but Mike is ignoring the business in favor of his

Speaker 2 hot wife who didn't have that for that long. So sales were lagging as costs skyrocketed.
He couldn't cover payroll.

Speaker 2 So what are you going to do? He goes to a blackjack table to count cards. I mean, this is what you do.
Sure.

Speaker 2 But he got the worst streak of luck he's ever had.

Speaker 2 If there were 20 small cards and one of them. All this guy's life is a streak of luck.

Speaker 2 This is the story of a white man in America. I mean, this is a guy who keeps failing and keeps getting every opportunity, ends up running a pillow.

Speaker 2 He's a pillow magnate and he still doesn't know what the fuck to do.

Speaker 2 So he goes to a blackjack table and he doesn't hit. And he's like, gosh, what am I going to catch a break?

Speaker 2 So he'd get the face. If he had 20 small cards and one face card, he'd get the face card every time.
It was just, he was counting cards, but it was failing.

Speaker 2 And even with thousands still to gamble, he went to a different casino in Iowa. And while driving, he hears a booming voice,

Speaker 2 quote,

Speaker 2 Go to church tomorrow. You are done with gambling.
Four days ago, you played your last card.

Speaker 2 Smoking the pipe.

Speaker 2 That's scary, right? Yeah, it's super scary.

Speaker 2 The next day in the sermon, he heard it again. Quote, you are done with gambling.
Don't worry about counting cards to cover your company's expenses.

Speaker 2 A little while later, he heard it again. Quote, you will meet Kendra.

Speaker 2 She is the one. Through her, you will become closer to me.

Speaker 2 Now, look, if Mike Lindell,

Speaker 2 if Mike Lindell had brought us world peace by now,

Speaker 2 he did.

Speaker 2 This story

Speaker 2 would

Speaker 2 like him, like God being like, this is your wife, might make sense.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But he's just a crackpot.

Speaker 2 Well, he heard that and he started crying. He started weeping.
And the parishioners saw him and they started repeating hallelujah and then they all placed their hands on him.

Speaker 2 And when he finally left, he said he felt genuine Christian love.

Speaker 2 It's a great story. It's not really a story.
Then

Speaker 2 he then,

Speaker 2 I don't know what he's doing in Laguna Beach at this point, but then he initially comes back to County Guards, probably.

Speaker 2 He flies Kendra and his sister Cindy out

Speaker 2 and they hit it off.

Speaker 2 But they took it slow, which was befitting of a woman of the Lord.

Speaker 2 And she was a woman of the Lord, Gary. Only.

Speaker 2 Only in the butt.

Speaker 2 Only fingers in the guard hole.

Speaker 2 Let me explain to you how much of a woman of God she was. She was in the airport, and she pointed to a stranger and said, I've got to pray with him.

Speaker 2 And then she told the man, quote, the Lord's telling me I need to pray for you. And the man burst into tears.

Speaker 2 So think about that.

Speaker 2 He probably worked for Boeing.

Speaker 2 She knew my pillow was in a deep hole.

Speaker 2 They owed $6 million in about six months. And she said Mike had to fire two of his closest

Speaker 2 high-level executives. Shocking.

Speaker 2 What? Shocking. How terribly he runs a business.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's just fucking amazing.
He owes $6 million.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's a good idea. That's why you don't hire

Speaker 2 500 employees right away.

Speaker 2 You don't hire 500 crack addicts, yeah. No.
No.

Speaker 2 So Kendra's like, okay, you got to fire two of your closest high-level executives. And Mike's like, okay.

Speaker 2 And after a few days of confrontation, they resigned. And Mike dives back into taking care of the MyPillow business,

Speaker 2 looks into every aspect he's been ignoring. And by July, in July, sorry, he said, by the end of the year, we are going to have $8.2 million in the bank.

Speaker 2 Okay, now where do you start that? That's like a, where are you going to start? Well,

Speaker 2 Gareth, you start laying off hundreds of people. Yeah.
Because you got to make money. Yeah, absolutely.
That's how you do it. So this is called dozing.

Speaker 2 So they slash and burn, and they get the debt down to about 2 million, but it's November and they pretty much need the money immediately.

Speaker 2 And Mike is in a deer hunting stand in Minnesota and he's frantically updating the sales graph on his phone when he just sees this crazy huge spike of sales.

Speaker 2 He's talking

Speaker 2 now talking on the phone is against the rules of deer hunting. You're not supposed to, because you scare the deer away.
So you're not supposed to be on your phone. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But he called his media guy anyway.

Speaker 2 And the media guy said, two words,

Speaker 2 explains everything.

Speaker 2 Fox News.

Speaker 2 The midterms had just happened. Republicans retook Congress.

Speaker 2 And the old Fox News audience was riled up. And they want

Speaker 2 to support a regular schlub guy who's like them with a backhead with a gambling ad, a gambling addict, marries women based on the booming voice behind him, has been there five or six times.

Speaker 2 A product

Speaker 2 that is proudly made in America. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Gareth,

Speaker 2 that's my pillow.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 so Mike

Speaker 2 takes the last of his company's money and buys Fox ads.

Speaker 2 And it pays off, dude. They

Speaker 2 rehired a lot of people they had fired and ended the year with a bank balance of Gareth. I don't know if you can believe this.
8.2 million.

Speaker 2 No, 8.19 million. Shut up.
But that's basically 8.2. It is.
Gareth.

Speaker 2 Why did you say my name like that? How did you just say my name, Gareth?

Speaker 2 Who cares? The heard God.

Speaker 2 And God was like, 8.2 billion. He heard God.
God talks in numbers.

Speaker 2 The Fox News element is not helpful. That's the guy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you are touched. Whoa.

Speaker 2 So, next, Mike did what any rising conservative does. He made friends with Stephen Baldwin.

Speaker 2 Okey-doky.

Speaker 2 Stephen Baldwin, by the way, for those of you who don't know, not doing great.

Speaker 2 Not doing great. Was he ever?

Speaker 2 It's pretty bad now.

Speaker 2 Quote, he became like a brother.

Speaker 2 Well, he's got enough of those.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he does have a lot of those. They're all not.
Well, actually, two of them are okay.

Speaker 2 Stephen went with Mike to the Federal Enforcement Homeland Security Program Awards Gala.

Speaker 2 Great. Do you want to hear that again? sure

Speaker 2 the federal enforcement homeland security program awards gala yep

Speaker 2 and he went with them because mike was being honored and for anyone who's like hey america's cooked in the stupidest place of all time this was like 10 years ago

Speaker 2 Mike was honored with the Patriot Award for his foundation assisting ICE agents and other feds during their time of need. Oh, my fucking God.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. During their time of need.
Their time of need.

Speaker 2 The level of victimization we have been doing for ICE the whole time. It's the same.

Speaker 2 Like when we're like, these poor bastards, these poor guys. They're just, you know, that some people are trying to find out where they live and are attacking them and being tackling them.

Speaker 2 So he gives a speech. His speech is awful, but it started his sort of integration into the world of right-wing celebrities and political figures.
Mike's not political.

Speaker 2 He's never been political up to this point.

Speaker 2 He's been too busy,

Speaker 2 you know, smoking just an insane, yeah, I mean, he's like a more crack guy. But now he's sober and he's religious.
And so he falls right in with the right-wing movement.

Speaker 2 He asked questions mostly to, he would go on like right-wing radio programs and he'd ask questions of the hosts.

Speaker 2 And it turns out on every issue, he was conservative.

Speaker 2 Just common sense, you know, common sense thinking. There's no record of him talking to a liberal or a lefty, just, you know, just kind of all worked out.

Speaker 2 In February of 2016, he was invited to the National Prayer Breakfast.

Speaker 2 Now, he

Speaker 2 really did not like Obama comparing the epidemic of Islamic jihad to the violent past of Christianity. Yeah, that is

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 super uncool.

Speaker 2 He saw it as, quote, taking Christians down a peg. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which you don't do.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 2 And then afterwards, he was part of a select group who got to meet Ben Carson.

Speaker 2 Our greatest brain surgeon. That's exciting.
Remember how Ben Carson had the story of how he stabbed a guy?

Speaker 2 Yes, in the chest. The guy was saved because of a belt or something.
I don't remember why. Yeah, he's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there is a crazy story of him

Speaker 2 saving someone. So that one moment of Ben Carson's life is so far the entirety of Mike Lindell's life.
That story of Ben Carson is the most normal story that's been in this episode.

Speaker 2 Mike was so nervous that he couldn't talk to Ben. He was just like frozen up.
I mean, who wouldn't get butterflies around Ben Carson? Guys, he's fucking

Speaker 2 So, Baldwin asked Mike what his presidential slogan would be. Wasn't Ben Carson the head of HUD for a minute? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, that worked out. There you go.

Speaker 2 So Baldwin asked Mike what his presidential slogan would be. And Mike said, quote, vote for me and I'll put the R back in Washington.

Speaker 2 Help? What?

Speaker 2 What does he mean? Do you not get that? No.

Speaker 2 So in some parts of the country, and I don't think it's where he's from. Oh, why? In some parts of the country, they say Washington instead of Washington.
Like it's like an accenty thing.

Speaker 2 Fucking.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I hate it. I hate what he said.

Speaker 2 After that, Stephen Baldwin got Mike invited to the 2016. I can't believe we got to put this fucking body at the floor of Stephen Baldwin.

Speaker 2 And he he got to sit next to the Trump family. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Now, Mike has a religious vision that he would one day meet with Trump, and that was reinforced when he found out that Trump knew about him.

Speaker 2 So whenever a TV show

Speaker 2 that Trump was watching went to commercial, Trump would point at the TV and say, quote, watch, it's going to be that pillow guy. Watch, it'll be that pillow guy again.

Speaker 2 So Trump is just watching Fox News and he loves a shuckster. Yeah.
And he's like, this guy's great. He does what I do.
This guy's full of shucks. That's all it is.

Speaker 2 The premonition was building towards truth. Mike prayed, God, I don't know what's going on going on here, but please just show me.
And just then he gets a text. Trump wants to meet.
Mike weeps.

Speaker 2 It seemed like God had spoken directly to me in real time. I mean, this is incredible stuff.

Speaker 2 We really

Speaker 2 should have been euthanized. He's like a rabbit animal.

Speaker 2 He just, he's done no good. He's a little too...
He just needs to be institutionalized. I shouldn't say that.
He needs to be in a room full of soft pillows where he can just kind of bounce around.

Speaker 2 Are you talking about Lindell?

Speaker 2 I'm talking about Lindell. Trump should be exploding.
Let me tell you something. Trump should be exploding.
No.

Speaker 2 No, Trump should not be.

Speaker 2 Lindell is playing out exactly the way we want him to. It's beautiful.
Let's just get to the end because

Speaker 2 it's great.

Speaker 2 But Trump exploded?

Speaker 2 No, Trump has the Trump thing's not great. But the Lindell story is fantastic.

Speaker 2 So in New Jersey, just days before the meeting, Mike is a nervous wreck.

Speaker 2 What am I going to say to him? What am I going to do? He's checking his breath. He's got banana.

Speaker 2 Oh, God. chewing chewing on a pillow oh god yeah he's practicing the double dance the double fist dance

Speaker 2 but things keep happening that calm him down like when he was at lunch and two women came to his table and said quote you have something very important coming up and we want to pray with you that whatever it is it goes well

Speaker 2 What the fuck is this shit? Is this what Christians all tell each other happens? It's so fucking weird. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 It's crazy. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 So all these Christians who like him read that and they go, that's what actually happened. It's just so insane.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 It's so easy to lie. Like, why don't we just become a Christian podcast? I mean, we kind of are.
Well, I mean, we're not, but no, it would be way better.

Speaker 2 If we wanted to, I mean, if we went right, oh my God, it'd be a great, it'd be a great five years.

Speaker 2 So much. It'd be a great five years.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So the meeting started with Trump looking at the big cross Mike wore around his neck and asking, quote, are you a Christian?

Speaker 2 Well, that's a classic Trump.

Speaker 2 They discussed manufacturing and advertising and addiction, and Mike described Trump as down to earth and focused and practical.

Speaker 2 Now, the meeting ended when a man came in singing.

Speaker 2 For the best night's sleep in the whole wide world, visit mypillow.com. And Gareth, that man was Rudy Giuliani.

Speaker 2 Oh God, the man who shit his head.

Speaker 2 So Mike goes home and he is

Speaker 2 it's really amazing that it's just Fox News idiots.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Just like people who like a My Pillow slogan.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 So he's now a Trump convert. Like he's full in on Trump.

Speaker 2 Trump, he's a Trump man

Speaker 2 and everyone needs to know it now. Good.
And he has the perfect platform, a pillow company. Yeah, that is actually the perfect, that's the perfect platform.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 the corporate attorney, the MyPillow attorney, warned him, quote, it will cost my pillow dearly. Yeah, but that's

Speaker 2 a sacrifice. Yeah, it is.
It's worth it. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Mike said, we didn't get this far by me not listening to God. Well, to be fair, Mike, we got pretty far despite you smoking crack and marrying blackjack gears all the time.

Speaker 2 The next day, he sent out a press release about his support of Trump.

Speaker 2 What a fucking weirdo.

Speaker 2 He's a fucking idiot. He makes pillows.
Like, what's happening? Yeah, like, who that was with them the whole time. You were like, I don't care.

Speaker 2 Shut up. Like, it just made me be like, all right, I won't use your pillows.
Oh, fuck. It's just so weird.
I love Trump. Okay.

Speaker 2 This led to multiple media.

Speaker 2 This led to multiple media outlets calling him racists and evil.

Speaker 2 That sounds about right now. This was Mike's.

Speaker 2 What? I mean, that's also like,

Speaker 2 you know, it's just hilarious that right away everyone's like, you are a racist piece of shit. He's like, I make pillows.
Like, he just makes pillows.

Speaker 2 This was Mike's quote, first glimpse of how unfair the press can be. He now had a choice, protect his business or go all in on Trump.
And the first

Speaker 2 place his path directed him was Las Vegas to watch the presidential debate between Trump and Hillary.

Speaker 2 Now, he did not know he was going to get invited into the spin room, but he was.

Speaker 2 And a reporter asked him, You always wear a cross. What do you think of the Access Hollywood video? And Mike said he responded, quote, I was a crack cocaine addict.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it's one good way to take the heat off of a grab them by the pussy tape.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 That is an answer to a different question.

Speaker 2 That's such an amazing answer.

Speaker 2 What do you think about the grab by the pussy tape? I smoked crack.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, we'll be right back. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Spin rooms, that... I don't know if he knows what the spin room is, everybody.

Speaker 2 Certainly, maybe he's spinning out of control.

Speaker 2 Mike soon got a call.

Speaker 2 This is when he's in Vegas. Trump is holding a surprise rally in Minnesota the next day, and he wants Mike to go there and speak.

Speaker 2 Hometown boy, right?

Speaker 2 It's supposed to take place at airplane hangar.

Speaker 2 Now, the crowd was...

Speaker 2 like miles wrapped around for miles like a huge crowd and mike's absolutely terrified he's gonna be addressing tens of thousands of people plus millions are watching at home and he has no idea how and he just asked god for help and then a woman approached him oh jesus christ

Speaker 2 mike

Speaker 2 i'm michelle bachman you look like you need to pray

Speaker 2 see

Speaker 2 not helping gareth that helping

Speaker 2 michelle bachman has helped nobody

Speaker 2 michelle Bachman hasn't, her eyes haven't closed.

Speaker 2 She did help George Bush become president. Yeah, that was cool.
When he was out in the Bright Lights speaking about how he used to be a crackhead, the audience went crazy. They loved it.

Speaker 2 He shed his fear of public speaking, and he went out to speak at universities and businesses and political rallies.

Speaker 2 And Gareth Trump won.

Speaker 2 Thank God.

Speaker 2 Mike is at the party,

Speaker 2 and he's got it all now. He's got fame, he's got fortune,

Speaker 2 a relationship with a woman who wants to sleep in separate rooms, which everyone wants, and the divine love of Christ. That's perfect.
Well, I mean,

Speaker 2 you know, with pillows that comfortable, you want to get two rooms out of them.

Speaker 2 So he lives the next few years just like coasting. You know, he's coasted.
Everything's sweet. He's the My Pillow guy.
Yeah, he was.

Speaker 2 He was.

Speaker 2 I mean, he became like an advisor. Yeah, basically, he was all over the place.

Speaker 2 That makes sense. Yeah, it's tough.
Then the 21, then the 2020 election

Speaker 2 comes.

Speaker 2 By all accounts, it just probably would have been better for Trump to win.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just get it over with, and maybe it would have been a little,

Speaker 2 he wouldn't have had four years off to plot.

Speaker 2 So, Mike said about Christian,

Speaker 2 by November 2020,

Speaker 2 that turns him into an evangelist, proselytizing the gospel of election fraud. That is his new religion.

Speaker 2 Well, for those who don't know, Trump lost that election. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 So suddenly he is everywhere claiming the election had been stolen by Democrats.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Chinese hackers had wormed their way into dominion voting machines and stolen the presidency from God's chosen candidate, Donald Trump. Everybody knows that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And for those who don't remember or aren't familiar,

Speaker 2 anytime he was pressed, he came off as very unprepared and quite stupid.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Mike did all he could to keep the Lord's president in office. And

Speaker 2 as far as he's concerned, everything's on the table. Just a few days before Trump left the White House,

Speaker 2 Mr. Pillowman showed up to the West Wing with a stack of notes, and on the top page, it said, quote, martial law if necessary.

Speaker 2 So he gets it. But he did.
He got addicted to Trump. Trump became a drug, which happens with addictive personalities.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 even though Trump does leave the White House, Mike doesn't stop. In February, he debuted a two-hour documentary called Absolute Proof that he made

Speaker 2 in five days.

Speaker 2 Wonder how he made that so fast.

Speaker 2 He stayed up for five days straight to work on something

Speaker 2 when that's usually aided by a chemical substance. Yep.
Trump. But

Speaker 2 nobody has any proof that he's using again. But boy, boy, what an interesting thing to stay up five days straight to make a documentary.
I mean, you got to be on something to believe all of it.

Speaker 2 Strangely, the documentary was so bad and full of lies, especially about Dominion voting machines, that both Vimeo and YouTube pulled it for spreading misinformation. Dominion threatened to sue you.

Speaker 2 I mean, to get the Vimeo Yank.

Speaker 2 Dominion threatened to sue, and Mike said, quote, then sue me.

Speaker 2 Okay. So Dominion, two weeks later, filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against Mike and MyPillow for defamation.

Speaker 2 He asked for it. $1.3 billion.

Speaker 2 As well as Fox News.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they claim Mike, quote, continued to maliciously spread false claims that Dominion raided the election despite repeated warnings.

Speaker 2 So the lawyers noted that Mike promised absolute proof, but never delivered anything but fake documents.

Speaker 2 And then Mike tried to counter-sue, but a judge just was like, that's frivolous. And they charged Mike for all the lawyers' fees.

Speaker 2 Mike then put on a

Speaker 2 highly publicized two-day cyber symposium

Speaker 2 this is to get everything on the table get all the evidence on the table yeah and he and he laid it now i i this is a pillow this guy makes pillows this guy made pillows come on cry just

Speaker 2 yep that's who he is that's what he did so yeah

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 He lays it all out for everyone to see, which you'd think he would have done in the documentary, but okay.

Speaker 2 So exactly how china and uh the democrats stole the presidency using key election data as proof he was so sure of himself that he announced a five million dollar prove me wrong challenge oh gosh

Speaker 2 and he was immediately proved wrong

Speaker 2 and a computer scientist showed that Mike's election data was inauthentic and

Speaker 2 Mike had to pay him five million dollars. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 I can't believe he paid.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's awesome. That guy must have been like, oh, I can't wait.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 2 So, Mike relentlessly bullied the state of Idaho into doing a full recount, even though Trump had won Idaho with 67.2% of the vote.

Speaker 2 But he still bullies them into doing, because he's like, then we'll see the machines are lying.

Speaker 2 But he won.

Speaker 2 Mike said all 44 Idaho counties have been hacked.

Speaker 2 Now, one problem with that is that seven of them don't use voting machines.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 potentially

Speaker 2 that still makes sense.

Speaker 2 Smuggle a crack. That'll work out.

Speaker 2 So they do the recount, and it determines that

Speaker 2 it's accurate. The initial count is within 0.1% 0.1 percent of the

Speaker 2 so he's wrong

Speaker 2 um and they charge mike for the recount that they did so it feels like some bills are starting to pile up

Speaker 2 in 2022 mike was sitting in a drive-through line at a kansas hardy's when fbi agents surrounded his car and seized his cell phone as part of the federal investigation into a potential breach of voting system technology.

Speaker 2 Now, that's not going to do it, because he'll get pardoned if that, like,

Speaker 2 nothing will do. All of that,

Speaker 2 everything from then at this point is, you know,

Speaker 2 null and void, really.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Mike said he had, quote, enough evidence to put everybody in prison for life, 300-some million people, which I don't know if you know how many Americans there are, but that's 90% of Americans.

Speaker 2 That's pretty crazy. So we're all kind of.

Speaker 2 This crackhead's real good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This crackhead really knows what the fuck he's doing.

Speaker 2 Later that year, major retailers Kohl's and Bed Bath and Beyond dropped my pillow from their stores, costing Mike roughly $100 million.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm just trying to keep track of some math over here. It really feels like this business is going to be

Speaker 2 crashing out.

Speaker 2 No, I think it's, I think it's poised right where it should be. You think it's in a good spot.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 Mike started his own social media service called Frank Social. Now, for those of you who aren't on Frank's, it's really good.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of really, like, it's very similar to the other ones, but it's kind of like a no BS platform

Speaker 2 where you could kind of be you. Free speech reigns.

Speaker 2 You know, it's just, it's franks

Speaker 2 it's like a joke name that we would come up with on the show but it really exists well it got changed it's now called vocl

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 mike spent one million dollars a month building an app that pretty much just exit exists to give mike a place to talk because he's banned everywhere else because of spreading election lies yep keep spending

Speaker 2 this is in addition to the frank speech network which is also known as lindel tv yeah fsn has been really helpful for me to kind of get through this time because this is kind of a lonely time like you kind of feel like you're on an island a lot of time and that's what franks all the franks platforms have just been great that's right

Speaker 2 gareth

Speaker 2 guess how much he spent well i'll just tell you

Speaker 2 now fighting election fraud

Speaker 2 40

Speaker 2 million. Wow.
What an idiot. And that's outside of the lawsuits.
Yeah, well, he's on the hook. 1.3 billion.

Speaker 2 Well, the lawsuits are starting to pile up. It's not just that.
A Damian executive and engineer sued him, as did another voting machine company, SmartMatic.

Speaker 2 So in 2024, Mike took VO CL public, and it immediately recorded a deficit

Speaker 2 of over $140 million.

Speaker 2 I don't play the market that much, but is that good?

Speaker 2 No, it's not that good, actually.

Speaker 2 By the day. Holy fuck.

Speaker 2 This is your hero.

Speaker 2 But they had a plan. They had a plan to make up for all the lost revenue.
They hired Rudy Giuliani. Yeah, and again,

Speaker 2 when your Hail Mary is Rudy, you're in a good zone.

Speaker 2 In June of 2025,

Speaker 2 Mike was dealt with major... He's such a clown car of fucking morons.
It's fucking amazing. It's amazing this guy ever made money.
Like, this is just a guy that's made.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he should just have a shit. And

Speaker 2 if he had just shut up, he would just be living in pillow paradise. Yes.
If he had shut the fuck up, he would be living great. But this era with like him and Rudy and what the hell was her name?

Speaker 2 That woman who they all just so cocky being like, the election was stolen, all this shit.

Speaker 2 Kellyanne Conway. No.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of them. Yeah, I can't remember her name, but she gets sued too.
She was a big Dominion, like this. Oh, yeah, that woman.
Yeah. Yeah, she got hammered.
Like, yeah, she's fucked.

Speaker 2 So in June 2025, he was dealt a major blow. A jury found him guilty of defamation against former Dominion executive Eric Coomer, and he had to pay $2.3 million out of his personal funds.

Speaker 2 So that's not a good sign with the coming $1.3 billion lawsuit coming. It's like a bellwether.

Speaker 2 Mike currently has a crowdfunding campaign to pay for lawyers and fees to appeal the judgment, claiming he won't be able to afford it without the help of his followers.

Speaker 2 So far, he has raised $37,000 of the needed $400. Well, and we'll put the GoFundMe in this episode description just because we really, let's help get Mike over there.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, we've had some fun and we like to laugh, but the guy needs our help and his heart is in the right place. He's a friend of the show.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 2 uh but look if you can't afford to give also the website has a handy function where it lets you send him a prayer so that's cool yeah

Speaker 2 um all in all since he began his uh crusade to prove the absolutely false notion of election fraud mike and my pillow have lost around 200 million in counting and this

Speaker 2 doesn't even count the hundreds of millions that are going to come from the dominion thing mike himself has claimed that he's in ruins living on $1,000 a week, and he had to borrow money to keep...

Speaker 2 Excuse me.

Speaker 2 It's not that bad. I could live on $1,000 a week.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I've done a lot worse, Mike.

Speaker 2 And he had to borrow money to keep operations afloat,

Speaker 2 which is something he's used to, if that's true. He might have called that a fluff.

Speaker 2 He is a walking example of self-destruction that a lot of addicts have in America. Every time he gets back on his feet, he cuts his own legs legs out from under him.

Speaker 2 He was once an inspirational Christian success story, but his crazy behavior and ramblings has

Speaker 2 knocked that down.

Speaker 2 It would be sad if he wasn't such a piece of shit, but anyway, on October 22nd, the Pentagon announced, this is, what, three days ago. Yeah.

Speaker 2 On October 22nd, the Pentagon announced 60 new journalist outlets would be allowed into the building to cover the U.S. military.

Speaker 2 Nearly all legacy media had rejected their new press policies, so these 60 new will take place of the old media. The new ones include Gateway Pundit,

Speaker 2 podcaster Tim Poole,

Speaker 2 Frontlines by Turning Point USA, and Lindell TV created by Mike Lindell. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Mike quote, Lindell TV is proud to be part of a new generation of news organizations reshaping how real information reaches the public. Yeah, real information, for sure.

Speaker 2 Well, not to pile on the good news, but Dominion.

Speaker 2 Dominion, I believe, was now owned by a right-wing lunatic.

Speaker 2 I think it is, yeah. So even when it comes to the...

Speaker 2 But is it completely owned by him or is it

Speaker 2 No, is that Dominion? I thought they bought something else. I don't think they bought Dominion.
They bought everything. I think he bought another company.
I think it's Dominion, bro.

Speaker 2 Either way,

Speaker 2 this is what sucks about that last election. I mean, it's like there's many things that suck, but it's that these people all get the U-turn.

Speaker 2 Like, they get the.

Speaker 2 Oh, you're right. You're right.
It was bought by.

Speaker 2 This is October 9th.

Speaker 2 He purchased and rebanded Dominion voting system. The new company is called Liberty Voter.
Yeah, so now that's going to be the election

Speaker 2 counting. Like, we are.

Speaker 2 But why would any, why would any...

Speaker 2 So I'm just

Speaker 2 a liberal governor. I'm a liberal state house.
I'm a liberal, whatever. I'm a liberal.
Pull that quote.

Speaker 2 Why would you

Speaker 2 allow just immediately to get rid of all Dominion machines? Well, let me ask you this, Dave. Do you think they're going to do that? No.
Yeah, of course not.

Speaker 2 They're not because

Speaker 2 their whole model is to be the flat-footed oopsie how did it happens?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But regardless,

Speaker 2 the teeing up of this election

Speaker 2 to not be

Speaker 2 real,

Speaker 2 they've got it eight different ways. I mean,

Speaker 2 if it's not the gerrymandering, it's the,

Speaker 2 they'll force the recounts and they've put all these people in power and they might not even need to do that because the voting, the voting machines are going to be,

Speaker 2 you know, they are now

Speaker 2 that if this were to happen in 2026 or 2028, especially,

Speaker 2 they will validate any conspiracy theory that is needed if it even gets to that.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is cool. True.
Yeah, it is cool. Right after Steve Bannon says Trump is definitely going to be president in 2028.

Speaker 2 He did say that. I did sing in that video.

Speaker 2 Written by Josh Androwski.

Speaker 2 Source material, a lot of it's from Mike's own autobiography, so that's why it all sounds crazy and completely false.

Speaker 2 The book is called What Are the Odds from Crack Addict to CO by Mike Lindell, also The Guardian, Business Insider, and ABC News.

Speaker 2 Well, shout out to Mike Lindell. You really.
Shout out to Mike Lindell. You are a real fucking idiot.

Speaker 2 What a fucking idiot. And shout out to Mike Lindell.
You are a

Speaker 2 big, big, stupid idiot. But hey, you figured out a stupid way to make a pillow that old boomers who are probably a little racist loved.

Speaker 2 It just shows how fucked up.

Speaker 2 It just shows fucked up America is and how we've never solved any of our sort of issues that we've talked about for... on this podcast, you know, over 300 years or whatever.

Speaker 2 The fact that just the dumbest is

Speaker 2 so much fucking money

Speaker 2 but you know what i mean all the episodes we've talked about like this just these

Speaker 2 fucking idiots making money and it's like yeah the system is just a disaster

Speaker 2 is there no if you were a white crackhead with this level of a redemption story would no part of you be putting any sort of philanthropy towards helping people deal with drug addiction?

Speaker 2 Instead, he just becomes a fucking Trump moron and just loses himself in that and then woes me when his pillow company goes under because he believes that aliens hack the election.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, can I, I just like to say, like, I have said, like, on Twitter or whatever in the past, like, this guy is clearly still just a fucking drug addict.

Speaker 2 And people who are on the left have been like, hey, man, he really pulled himself out of his boots.

Speaker 2 Motherfucker,

Speaker 2 read the book, read anything. This dude has never stopped doing drugs.
This dude has never,

Speaker 2 every single thing about him says, I am still high on fucking drugs. As well as we really should not be,

Speaker 2 we look,

Speaker 2 these

Speaker 2 fascist psychos, they don't concede many victories or give tiny compliments or they don't give an inch. Why would you to this guy reward or celebrate him in any way?

Speaker 2 Just because he's a folksy dangerous does not mean he's not a dangerous.

Speaker 2 We really need to start getting our heads out of our fucking asses because this way that we've been playing it for the past 40, 50 years is not working. That's what got us here.

Speaker 2 So continuing to just sort of be like, hey, come on, we aim high.

Speaker 2 You know, let's, let's, that doesn't work.

Speaker 2 It fully is time to just try to get Jon Stewart to run for president and hold on to your butt cheeks because we have no hope other than attack these people as soon as humanly possible and do it by any means necessary when it comes to rhetorical abuse in their direction.

Speaker 2 All we really have as people with microphones is the ability to make fun of them. And that's why when we call Stephen Miller a ghoul or say that he's screech powers,

Speaker 2 you know, mixed with Nosferatu or whatever, like

Speaker 2 these are, that is all we have. And so you should not be championing Mike Lindell's comeback story because

Speaker 2 his comeback story is a story of a man who never came down.

Speaker 2 Seriously.

Speaker 2 So this is going up in a couple of days. So that means that

Speaker 2 we still have a couple days left of shows left. So on

Speaker 2 yeah, we'll be in Minneapolis. On the 29th, we'll be in Kansas City.
And on the 30th, we'll be in Denver. I think Denver's sold out, though.
Denver is sold out. But the rest of them.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The other two, you can get tickets to. Yeah, you can get tickets.
So get some tickets.

Speaker 2 What's up, doll heads? Just a reminder, always throw those doll heads on stage. We love them.
Hey, Gareth Reynolds here.

Speaker 2 I will be at Rooster T Feathers in sunnyvale california november 6th through november 8th i will be at the omaha funny bone the 28th and 29th of november and i will be in vancouver british columbia on december 2nd seattle december 3rd and eugene december 4th go to garethreynolds.com for tickets and information cal state east bay was founded on a belief that every student holds incredible potential and when that potential is unlocked doors open to opportunity to purpose to a better future for their families and communities our students are modern day pioneers, breaking new ground and paving the way for generations to come.

Speaker 4 Here, they find an intellectual oasis, a place to pause, reflect, and rise, gaining the knowledge and confidence to make their mark on the world. Enroll today at csueastbay.edu/slash start.