At the Star Tribune, we read in Stephen Montemayor's article, MyPillow inventor open to speculation about 2022 bid for Minnesota governor that pillow guy Mike Lindell is considering challenging first-term governor Tim Walz.
It's quite the fluff piece--with all sources praising Lindell's uncanny prediction that Trump would win the 2016 presidential election-- but nothing as the display of Lindell's political acumen in the October 3, 2018 YouTube interview, Laura Loomer Interviews MyPillow Inventor Mike Lindell.
In the clip, we learn that Doug Wardlow will be elected Minnesota's Attorney General and Jeff Johnson is going to be the next governor. They don't really get into which caucus will be in control of the Minnesota House, but it's clear they're rooting for Team Elephant.
As the Wikipedia entry, 2018 Minnesota gubernatorial election, notes:
In the end, Walz went on to defeat Johnson by the largest margin for a DFL candidate since 1986. His victory also gave Minnesota its longest streak of Democrats in the Governor's mansion in the state's history, at 12 continuous years.
As for Doug Wardlow, he's just another lawyer now. In fact, at the close of 2019, City Pages' Hannah Jones reported Oh cool, MyPillow's Mike Lindell's new lawyer is... Doug Wardlow.
She mentions some of the earlier legal work Lindell had needed:
Wardlow’s doing more with his time than waiting for the next election. According to the Star Tribune, he’s currently working as an attorney for another conservative mover and shaker: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
And if you made it all year without thinking about that guy, we're impressed. The pillow-hugging, Bible-thumping executive’s face pops up all the time—and not just in those incessant commercials that got him a shoutout from Donald Trump.
Lindell recently vowed on Fox News to turn Minnesota “completely red” on President Trump’s behalf, stopping just short of running for office himself.
Earlier this year, Lindell claimed during a Conservative Political Action Conference that Trump was “chosen by God” to be president and get the country “back on track with our conservative values” and “getting people saved in Jesus’ name.” At the time Lindell became politically aware in 2009, he said, he saw a world that “looked like the End Times prophesied in the Bible.”
“What I saw before me were friends unemployed, terrible political correctness, people saying ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas,’ and people trying to take God out of everything and not even acknowledging Jesus Christ,” he said. As Trump made his campaign announcement in 2015, Lindell felt “something miraculous” was about to unfold.
Lindell's enthusiasm for miracles is what keeps guys like Doug Wardlow busy. MyPillow has been sued on numerous occasions in recent years for false advertising, and under the terms of a settlement with customers in California, can no longer claim its pillows help with all sorts of medical conditions including sleep apnea, fibromyalgia, and cerebral palsy.
Neither Wardlow nor Lindell responded to interview requests (a Lindell spokesperson did confirm that Wardlow now orks for the Lindell Management Company), but Wardlow shared the Star Tribune profile on his Facebook and Twitter feeds,
Lindell tells Loomer it was all good by the 2018 interview. Your mileage may vary.
For those readers unfamiliar with Loomer's insights on Minnesota politics, they might check out, Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl came to Minneapolis for God knows what reason from last year's City Pages. Or the Post Bulletin article, Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visit leaves Muslims in quandary.
In a Columbia Journalism Review article about an strange viral fake news moment during Trump's 2019 Minneapolis campaign rally, Star Tribune reporter Andy Mannix summarized the news room's reaction to a visit by Loomer to the Twin Cities in February 2019:
In Minnesota, there has been a rise in hoaxes meant to demonize the Somali community since Omar’s election to Congress. In February, right-wing provocateurs Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl released a series of videos from Minneapolis in which they falsely claimed that “Sharia police” patrolled our streets. In the Star Tribune newsroom, their visit led to a spirited debate among reporters and editors on how–or whether–to cover it. Ultimately, Jennifer Brooks, our metro opinion columnist debunked the pair’s allegations without naming Loomer or Wohl. “They aren’t worth the ink it would take to print their names,” Brooks wrote. “But this weekend, they cast lie after lie after lie into the wind, describing a Minneapolis that is a terrifying wasteland, safe only to travel in armored cars and with bulletproof vests. We don’t know who’s waiting downwind, believing every word.”
Read Jennifer Brooks' column, Oh no-go zones: Minnesota survives an unwelcome weekend invasion.
Yeah, there's some deep thinking on Minnesota's political future somewhere between the two of them.
Like Lindell, Loomer's grown some political aspirations. She's running for Congress in Florida. Recent coverage includes the Sun Sentinel article, Laura Loomer, self-described ‘most banned’ woman by social media, finds a platform with Florida GOP chairman and an appearance in Florida Politics' Sunburn about her sense of geography.
Here's the video:
Consider the source, as my high school journalism teacher always reminded us.
Screengrab: From the YouTube.
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