Category Archives: Tina Smith

Five Reasons To Never, Ever Vote For the MyPillow Guy

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Mike Lindell, the “MyPillow Guy,” seems to be the front-runner to become Minnesota Republicans’ nominee for Governor in the 2022 election.  This seems like a big joke to many, but we need to take it very seriously.

Lindell has many advantages that other GOP gubernatorial candidates lack — minor celebrity, statewide name recognition, tons of personal money, a compelling personal story of redemption, the wink and a nod endorsement of Minnesota GOP Chair Jennifer Carnahan, and most importantly, a likely Trump endorsement.

In a GOP primary, where the most slavishly Trumpy Trumpists rise to the top, Lindell can point out that he not only supports Trump, he practically deifies him.  Take his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):

“As I stand before you today, I see the greatest president in history. Of course he is. He was chosen by God. God answered our prayers, our millions of prayers, and gave us grace, and a miracle happened on Nov. 8, 2016. We were given a second chance and time granted to get our country back on track with our conservative values and getting people saved in Jesus’s name.”

Top that, Paul Gazelka, Pete Stauber, Scott Jensen, Chad Greenway, and Matt Birk.
To any swing voters paying close attention, it’s obvious that electing Lindell governor would be a disaster. But are they paying attention? I don’t want to take it for granted that Minnesotans won’t elect a narcissistic minor celebrity.  See Jesse Ventura in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2016.

So here are five important reasons to work like hell to keep Lindell out of power.

Crooked Businessman.  The MyPillow company Lindell founded has earned a humiliating “F” grade from the Better Business Bureau due to the number of consumer complaints it has received.

He also was forced to pay a $1 million lawsuit settle for making false medical claims about his pillows.  It turns out that pillows cannot cure insomnia, sleep apnea and fibromyalgia.

Over his career, Lindell has shown himself to be a rich, fast-talking, serial-lying, TV-empowered con man running a shady business. Sound familiar?

Admitted Stalker.  Mike Lindell has been divorced twice, and violated a restraining order obtained by a girlfriend who accused him of physically abusing her. This is how Jim Heath TV describes those events:

Lindell was divorced for the first time by 2008, and was arrested in January of that year on suspicion of domestic assault.

The woman he was dating claimed he had punched and kicked her — even hitting her with “a four-foot wooden dowel,” according to documents.

Lindell denied the allegations, but an order of protection was still issued in the case.

He was arrested two months later for violating the order by allegedly taking the woman’s car.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to the order of protection violation.

Keep in mind the old adage: “Character is who you are when no one is looking.”

Dangerous Quack. You know those guys who crawl out from under rocks to con desperate people whose families are in crisis? Yeah, he’s that guy.

At a time when Americans were desperate for good science-based advice about how to survive the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, Lindell publicly promoted the plant extract oleandrin as “the miracle of all time.”

Meanwhile, scientists stress that there is no scientific evidence supporting these claims, and that oleandrin is poisonous even at very low doses.

Oh and by the way, Lindell just happens to have a financial and governing stake in a company that makes oleandrin, Phoenix Biotechnology.

This chapter tells us a lot about how Lindell would be as a governor. His instincts are to ignore science and put profits over people.

Murderer Protector.  Lindell shamelessly donated bail money to spring accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse from jail.  Kenosha, Wisconsin law enforcement officials have charged the young white male of the murder of two Wisconsinites who were peacefully calling for an end to police brutality.

Lindell later claimed he didn’t intend his donation to help Rittenhouse with bail, but he refused to seek the return of his donation. As with Trump, pay attention to what Lindell does, not what he says.

Keep in mind, Lindell didn’t come to the defense of George Floyd, or the police officers who were bloodied and killed at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists. But he rushed to the defense of someone murdering peaceful Americans who were speaking out for justice for black people. That speaks volumes.

Inciter of Insurrection.  After more than 70-days of bipartisan local, state and federal officials confirming 2020 presidential election results through legally sanctioned counts, audits, recounts, re-recounts, certifications, and court reviews, Lindell continues to publicly pedal the baseless, dangerous lie that Biden’s 7 million vote, 74 elector margin is somehow invalid. For good measure, he also claimed Senator Tina Smith’s 5-point victory over Jason Lewis was actually a loss. 

With no supporting evidence, and several court decisions tossing out the allegations, Lidell continues to falsely allege that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had conspired with foreign powers to rig voting machines to steal the election from Trump. As a result, Twitter has permanently banned Lindell and his company MyPillow, because they have seen that he is unable or unwilling to tell the truth, and is inciting violent attacks against democracy. 

Speaking of inciting violence, Lindell attended Trump’s infamous insurrection-inciting rally, which led to Trump’s second impeachment.  After supporting the incitement, Lindell aggressively pushed false claims that the murder and mayhem at the Capitol was done by Antifa members, instead of by Trump-supporting white supremacists and militia members. 

Weeks later, none of the arrested insurrectionists have been found to be associated with Antifa, or any other left-wing group.  

As Lindell’s infomercials say, “but wait, there’s more!”

Lindell was photographed entering a White House meeting  with a list of talking points that included encouraging President Trump to impose martial law to help Trump overturn the will of the people in the 2020 presidential election. Martial law!

So while we’re yucking it up at the cute SNL skit, remember that this guy isn’t just a harmless kitschy-cute infomercial huckster.  He’s a consumer-victimizing, protection order-violating, science-denying, serial-lying, insurrection-inciting, and martial law-advocating crackpot.

“Trumpublicans” Not Republicans

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Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not on the ballot in 2018.  If he was, polls indicate he would get crushed in a landslide by Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders or Oprah Winfrey.  But because Trump isn’t on the ballot, criticizing him during the campaign will have little effect on the Trump agenda, unless voters become convinced that the 468 Republican nominees who are on the general election ballots are substantively the same as Trump.

After the 2018 Republican primaries are over, we can expect many congressional Republicans to stop pandering to the roughly 35% of Americans who make up the “Trump base” and instead distance themselves from him in an attempt to win over the swing voters who will decide the election.  They’ll be saying things like “I support his tax cuts, but I’m my own person and don’t agree with him on many things.”  This is absurd because most Republicans voted with Trump over 90% of the time in Congress.

Still, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising will be spent in gerrymandered districts to build this “independent from Trump” illusion.  If congressional Republicans get away with this Extreme Makeover, Americans will be stuck with unchecked Trumpism in 2019 and 2020, and perhaps beyond.  It could get so much uglier.

So Democrats need to do more than just give long-winded anti-Trump speeches on MSNBC. Casually involved swing voters don’t have the patience for long-form communications. Instead, Democrats need a concise term to rebrand Republicans in the Trump era.  Congressional Republicans need to be branded what they are, a group of Trump-programmed bots who are ideologically indistinguishable from Trump.  Republicans of the Trump era need to be branded as “Trumpublicans.”

I certainly didn’t invent the term “Trumpublican,” and I don’t find it especially clever.  But it has the important virtue of clearly and concisely communicating that Republicans have become a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump.  These shameful 468 Republicans have empowered this dangerous, bigoted, unpopular moron.  So let’s shine klieg lights on what these Republicans have allowed themselves to become, boot-licking Trumpublicans.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras would never have kicked 30 million Americans off of health coverage.  But that’s what Trumpublicans giddily did when they repeatedly pushed Trump’s unpopular and cruel TrumpCare bill.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras would never have deported 800,000 beautiful young people productively living out the American dream.  But Trumpublicans enthusiastically embraced Trump’s unpopular and racist DACA repeal.

Even trickle-down Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras never would have given 83% of a tax bill benefits to the richest 1% of Americans.  But these Trumpublicans toasted the billionaire Trump as that extremely unpopular and immoral bill was enacted into law.

Even Republicans of the Reagan, Dole and Bush eras supported conservative Presidents and Administrations that had at least some modicum of experience, integrity and ethics.  Trumpublicans have embraced and blindly defended the Trump Administration’s jaw-dropping parade of incompetence, inexperience and corruption.

Because of congressional Republicans’ complete lack of Trump oversight the last two years, they are no longer Republicans in the sense Americans have traditionally used that word.  That term is now much too good for them.  Republicans have completely merged with Trump Incorporated and made themselves into Trumpublicans.  Americans need to understand this truth before November 6, 2018.  Drain THAT swamp.

So Democrats should be continually reframing Republicans as “Trumpublicans” during the 2018 mid-term campaign season.   Unlike conservatives, progressives don’t have Russian bots and billionaire funders to drive the message.  So Democrats are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way, with disciplined repetition.  Trumpublicans, Trumpublicans, Trumpublicans.