Time to Log Off is a weekly series documenting the many ways our political figures show their whole asses online.
I don't feel too bad for Mike Lindell, the martial law-endorsing, sedition-boosting former addict who now lives in unimaginable luxury thanks to his multi-million dollar empire of special sacks of soft fabric. Still, despite the heaping helping of schadenfreude I felt watching his much-hyped "Cyber Symposium" crash and burn, I can't help feel a pang of ... whatever German word means the opposite of schadenfreude after seeing him spiral wildly out of control (even for him) over the past few days.
Where to even begin? Perhaps with the fact that he's allegedly been harboring a wanted fugitive from the FBI? Sure, let's start there. Mike Lindell is allegedly providing a special "safe house" to hide Tina Peters, the Republican clerk and reporter for Mesa County, Colorado, who is currently wanted for questioning by the FBI after she allegedly helped leak a series of voting machine passwords to a notorious conspiracy theory website.
"She's worried about her safety," Lindell told Vice News on Wednesday, when asked about why he was apparently harboring Peters. "These people are ruthless."
Incredibly, housing an accused election-tamperer from the feds is on the lower end of Lindell-related craziness this week. For that, let's check out Mike's recent appearance on OAN, Fox News's low-rent mutant offspring favored by people who find the Murdoch media empire a little too liberal for their taste.
I, personally, will never not call him "Trucker" from here on out. Thank you, Mike, for inspiring me.
In any case, lest anyone think Lindell is merely a one-trick pony, I draw your attention to the fact that he has demonstrated his ability to rant and rave on not one, but two non-Fox News networks this week.
I feel like there's some sort of famous analogy — perhaps one repopularized by a major figure within the far-right political scene — that could accurately diagnose what we're seeing here? Hm. If only. If only ...
But why is Mike having such a bad week, you ask? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that someone just called his $5 million bluff by offering to conclusively disprove the expansive fiction Lindell has been attempting to pass off as a Very Serious Election Fraud Conspiracy.
"It had nothing to do with my data," Lindell insisted Wednesday, after security expert Bill Alderson attempted to claim the bedding magnate's million-dollar bounty, which he'd offered to anyone who could prove that Joe Biden's electoral victory wasn't the result of a massive global cyber-conspiracy involving Dominion voting machines, reverse vampires, and Pepe Silvia.
"I want Mike to keep his money, and to be happy and live a good life,” Alderson told Dakota News Now. "But if he pays anybody else I want to be paid with them because it said he could split it. So I will take a split, if he's gonna send it out, I'd like my share."
Perhaps Lindell is worried that shelling out the $5 million might be not the best financial decision while he's staring down the barrel of a more than $1 billion dollar lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems? Perhaps. I don't know. I'm pretty bad with money myself.
Regardless, Lindell's bad week did have its rare spot of sunshine when Fox News's own Sean Hannity — the very one whom Lindell denounced during his OAN rant — went out of his way to twist himself into an advertiser's dream pretzel by hyping MyPillows as the solution for a good night's rest in the midst of the U.S.'s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. And yes, I realize how insane that sentence sounds.
"How would you like to be in Kabul today, as an American, and you can't get to the airport? Where are you thinking your life is headed?" Hannity mused during Tuesday's broadcast of his eponymous radio show. “If you're one of those family members, I bet you're not sleeping. I don't even think MyPillow can do it. MyPillow.com."
"That's where I go," Hannity continued. "I fall asleep faster, I stay asleep longer. These are going to be a lot of sleepless nights for so many of our fellow Americans. We've got to get them home."
See Mike? It's not all bad. You've still got friends, for some reason. But before you lose anymore, perhaps you should consider that it might be time to log off.
