Days after MAGA pillow magnate Mike Lindell slunk back to Fox News and began airing his ads on the network again, the MyPillow CEO spun a ludicrous conspiracy theory accusing the network of being in cahoots with Dominion Voting Systems specifically with an aim to cancel Lou Dobbs.
Lindell has become the loudest promoter of former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” baselessly asserting that voting machines flipped millions of votes from the former president. Dominion, meanwhile, has sued Lindell for $1.3 billion over his unfounded election fraud claims.
During a Tuesday appearance on fellow election denialist Steve Bannon’s podcast, as first flagged by RawStory, Lindell claimed that Fox News asked Dominion to sue them so the network could get rid of Dobbs and have an excuse to avoid talking about the election results.
“I still believe Fox said, ‘Hey, come and sue us quick so we can fire Lou Dobbs,’” Lindell declared on War Room Pandemic.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re going pure conspiracy theory,” Bannon playfully replied before pressing Lindell to expand on his theory.
“I think they invited the lawsuit,” the pillow mogul bellowed. “After Nov. 3, after they called Arizona early, they didn’t talk about the election. You go back in time and you can’t find them talking about the election. They were too busy talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the fact.”
Despite Lindell’s claims, many Fox News personalities and guests sowed doubt about the election results in the immediate weeks after the election. While pro-Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell regularly appeared and peddled outrageous voting machine conspiracies, several Fox hosts lent credence to their allegations.
“I believe because they were sued by Smartmatic—which was kind of weird—and all of the sudden, they invited Dominion in and then fired Lou Dobbs the next day, whenever it was,” the MyPillow CEO continued. “And then nobody could go on Fox anymore and talk about the 2020 election. It's a good excuse for Fox.”
Lindell, however, appears to have his lawsuits mixed up a bit. Fox announced the cancellation of Dobbs’ Fox Business Network program one day after Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network and several of its hosts, including Dobbs. Dominion’s $1.6 billion suit against Fox came nearly two months later. (Fox has filed a motion to dismiss both lawsuits.)
Prior to Dobbs getting the boot, the sycophantic host was one of the biggest peddlers of election conspiracies following Trump’s loss. His phony claims about rigged voting machines eventually prompted Fox to run a fact-check segment during his program in December following a retraction demand by Smartmatic.
Fox News has been the target of Lindell’s ire for months now, with the pro-Trump businessman grousing that the network isn’t giving his election lies any coverage. Fox’s refusal to run a promo for Lindell’s so-called “cyber symposium” in July resulted in the MyPillow chief yanking all his commercials from the channel, only to eventually return last month.