MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell hosted a three-day “cyber symposium” in South Dakota last week that he claimed would provide irrefutable proof that the 2020 presidential election was hacked by foreign actors and stolen from former President Donald Trump. Lindell was so confident that he boldly offered $5 million to anyone who could disprove the legitimacy of the data he presented while predicting that the evidence would be so overwhelming that Trump would be restored to office by August 13.
Needless to say, none of that happened, as Lindell’s symposium was such an utter debacle that even his own experts were forced to admit that they had no proof of anything that Lindell had been claiming.
Predictably, Lindell reacted to the fiasco by spreading new conspiracy theories alleging that left-wing reporters worked with “antifa” activists to sabotage his event, going so far as to accuse the far-right outlet TruNews of being an “antifa” front group funded by Media Matters.
TruNews—an anti-vaccine, anti-semitic, End Times conspiracy theory network—was among the media organizations granted credentials to cover Lindell’s event. TruNews was so sympathetic to Lindell’s claims of massive voter fraud that the network sent two correspondents to broadcast from the symposium and streamed the entire event live on its website for three days.
None of that seemed to matter to Lindell. Broadcasting on his Frank Speech platform Monday, Lindell took aim at TruNews.
“I have a report from from our counter-intelligence on the people that were there,” Lindell said. “Antifa individuals were working with TruNews, which is a fake news site established by Media Matters for America.”
TruNews played Lindell’s comments on its program Monday night, and the hosts were understandably mystified by Lindell’s allegations, declaring that if he can be this wrong about them, then nobody should believe anything that he says about any subject.
“It really is sad,” said TruNews founder Rick Wiles. “Somebody is feeding Mr. Lindell a lot of bad information, and I think he should wise up and take a look at who he has surrounded himself with and whether somebody has gotten inside his group and they are now turning him into a clown. They’re destroying his credibility.”
“If his sources of information are so faulty that he accuses TruNews of being a Media Matters puppet and that we smuggle antifa terrorists into meetings, if his information is that faulty, then I can’t trust anything Mike Lindell says,” Wiles added. “I’ve been one guy here through this whole thing that has said, ‘Let’s hear him out. Let’s not attack him. Let’s give the man a fair chance to present his information.’ That’s why we sent Edward [Szall] and Lauren [Witzke], but now I wouldn’t waste a dime on anything Mike Lindell says.”
