MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Responds To The Laura Ingraham Boycott
Rags-to-riches MyPillow inventor and CEO Mike Lindell has weighed in on the advertiser boycott of The Ingraham Angle, Laura Ingraham’s show on the Fox News Channel which airs weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern time. Advertisers began fleeing the show after Ingraham got into a petty and well-publicized social media dispute with a prominent Parkland high school gun control advocate, for which she subsequently apologized. The student, David Hogg, had already tweeted out a list of Ingraham advertisers, however, and the rest is history.
The controversy also prompted a counter-boycott by Ingraham fans against those corporations who pulled their ads; they insist that the sponsorship exit constitutes an attack on freedom of speech.
MyPillow commercials are all over television, including Fox News, and radio, with ads that often feature the Minneapolis-area company’s founder Mike Lindell himself. He also hawks his products on home shopping channels and via infomercials.
“Lindell famously created My Pillow after a dream he had in 2004. At the time, he was broke and addicted to crack cocaine…He was also an early supporter of then-candidate Trump, and has made a business practice of using suppliers based in the United States.” The Daily Caller explained.
In a tweet earlier this week, Mike Lindell made his feelings clear about continued sponsorship of FNC programming.
“I did not take my advertising down from IngrahamAngle and FoxNews, nor do I intend to.”
As you might expect, the tweet (which was echoed by the MyPillow twitter feed) received a mixed response, with some users among the social justice cohort claiming they would target MyPillow for a boycott and others indicating that Lindell’s decision gave them a reason to buy one or more of his sleep devices right away.
In a statement, Lindell told Minnesota’s Shakopee Valley News that “Advertising decisions are based on what’s best for MyPillow, my employees and my customers.”
I did not take my advertising down from @IngrahamAngle and @FoxNews, nor do I intend to. @seanhannity
— Mike Lindell (@realMikeLindell) April 2, 2018
Laura Ingraham, a single mother of three, was away on vacation last week, but her hosting job is apparently safe even after about 15 advertisers bailed, Fox News exec Jack Abernethy said in a statement released to the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets.
“We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts. We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children.”
A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a speechwriter in the Reagan administration, Ingraham, 54, also anchored her own program on MSNBC in the 1990s and was a longtime Fox News contributor and substitute host before The Ingraham Angle launched from the network’s D.C. studios on October 30, 2017. Along with a syndicated radio show, she is an author of several best-sellers and the founder of the LifeZette website and was a political commentator on ABC’s This Week.
Ingraham’s “angle” is that she is a champion of President Trump’s populist agenda and a critic of Never Trump Republicans and liberal Democrats alike. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia law school.
Like her or hate her, the pro-Trump Ingraham’s first night back is likely to generate huge ratings as a result of what the Kansas City Star described as an “online pillow fight,” along with quipping that “Politics can make strange bedfellows.”
As alluded to above, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is also a strong backer of President Trump, having met with Trump several times to discuss made-in-America products and boosting job growth in the U.S. He also spent Easter weekend at the Trump Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and was one of the president’s many dinner guests there. The president and First Lady Melania Trump also reportedly sleep on his pillows.
— Mike Lindell (@realMikeLindell) April 6, 2018
Mike Lindell’s company, which has run into some trouble with the Better Business Bureau which the MyPillow boss claims might have been politically motivated, reportedly has sold about 30 million pillows, and he has vowed to never outsource production overseas.
Update: Mike Lindell told Breitbart News that “sales are strong. We are blessed to have loyal customers who love MyPillow and recommend it to friends and family members.”
Added Breitbart News: “MyPillow’s strong sales are even more impressive given threats from Hogg supporters to stop buying from the brand, many of whom used the hashtag #BoycottMyPillow.”
