The Republican civil war is ramping up. The latest flash point was Saturday night when the fractious Kelli Ward was reelected chair of the Arizona Republican Party. Today we find out that her fellow orange triber, Mike Lindell, has been contemplating running for the governor of Minnesota — with the blessings of the Mango Monarch himself. Lindell says that he was disappointed when he went to the White House in Trump’s last week that his claims about sabotaged voting machines were passed off to subordinates, but he said that he did get one terrific gift from Trump, namely the promise of his endorsement. Associated Press:
The president has told him before that he would back his bid for governor of Minnesota, Lindell told The Associated Press. “Mike, if you did it, I would get behind you,” Lindell said Trump told him.
It’s a prospect that sends shivers down the spines of some Republicans in the state — where Trump lost by 7 percentage points — and cuts to the heart of the national party’s existential crisis. While many Republicans, particularly those in Washington, are eager to move on from the former president and his personality-driven, racially divisive politics, Trump’s acolytes across the country are already preparing to pick up the torch. […]
Lindell is a distinctly Trump-era figure. Just a few years ago, he was best known for campy late-night infomercials to sell his pillows, and for his frequently told back story of overcoming crack cocaine addiction. He said he wasn’t political until he met Trump in 2016, connected with a fellow businessman and soon became a vocal Trump true believer and donor.
And the true believer thinks that Trump’s endorsement is a good thing and will help him prevail against the current Democratic governor in office, Tim Walz. Apparently he doesn’t hear the groans of the Republicans in the state. Must be those cheap pillows of his affecting his hearing.
“The Republican brand has become toxic in the eyes of too many young people, formerly supportive suburbanites, women and diverse voters,” said former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, an establishment Republican who lost a comeback run for governor in 2018.
“We don’t need to guess how a general election campaign will go here for any candidate viewed mostly as a Trump proxy. Trump lost here twice and it wasn’t even close the second time.”
It would take some political alchemy to change this situation, but Lindell feels quite confident that he’s the magician to pull it off. Maybe Minnesotans would value his expertise regarding COVID-19?
As the coronavirus crisis deepened, Lindell caught flak in August for championing the unproven treatment of oleander after investing in a company that produced a compound from it.
Then, after the election, Lindell shared Trump’s refusal to accept Biden as the winner. Many of his claims about the outcome were labeled by Twitter as disputed. He posted but later deleted a tweet in December calling on Trump to declare martial law and seize the ballots and voting machines in seven key states. While he said he opposed the Capitol insurrection, MyPillow’s logo was prominently featured on a website that promoted the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the riot. Lindell has claimed “antifa” was responsible for the riot, even though authorities say there’s no evidence of that. He said he’s still holding out hope that the U.S. Supreme Court would somehow put Trump back in office.
And he believes his unflinching support for Trump would be a strong asset if he runs for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Tim Walz.
“Of course it would help. Why wouldn’t it help? The guy was the best president in history,” Lindell said, praising Trump’s response to the pandemic and his economic policies.
Lindell’s product, My Pillow, has been dumped recently by some major retailers, and Dominion Voting Machines has asked him to retract his defamatory statements. Plus, his compatriot in the Restore the Republic superPAC, Sidney Powell, has been sued by Dominion for $1.3 Billion, begging the question of how Powell is going to be able to restore much of anything when she’s deep in the heat of litigation battle. But Lindell is remarkably unfazed by any of this.
Lindell said he’s not worried. It’s the retailers’ loss if they succumb to pressure, he said. And he said he won’t let up on Dominion.
“You bring it on, Dominion, because I want everybody to see,” he said.
Maybe Lindell is depending upon Trump to form the Patriot Party so he can run on that ticket. I don’t see the Minnesota GOP racing to get him on theirs. GOP Wars continues.
I wonder if lindell is doing drugs again.
I think the evidence is unmistakable that he’s hopelessly hooked on a drug. One that is taken in the form of a beverage. An orange beverage that provides a form of Aid to certain people who are pre-disposed to be particularly susceptible to it. It’s even KKKool which makes it all the more desirable to it’s addicts when they are packed together in a howling mob.
Seems sleep deprived to be so delusional.
His pillows are not so great. Maybe he needs a new one.
Reason Never To Fear Trumpers Example #3402761.
These stories are so far fetched, it’s like reading Grimms fairy tales. This clown losing business and now we are suppose to believe that he’s running for Governor and will shake up the country. Come on you can do better than this.
I’m quoting the Associated Press.
The GOP-T followers buy into these stories. We should know about them.
FYI, pal: unlike other sites, this one references its sources. The sources may be full of it but our people are typically not.
I live in Minnesota and I am betting Mike Lindell would never even win the primary for governor here! For starters, he’s bat guano nuts. And although I don’t hold Tim Pawlenty’s opinion highly (when he was governor, he was no friend of the downtrodden–we used to say, “Troubles? We’ve got Pawlenty!”), if HE doesn’t endorse Lindell, then any Republicans with two brain cells probably wouldn’t either. Lindell better spend some time figuring out which god it is he worships, because it sure isn’t the same One I do.
He knows his deity…his name is trump.
Trmp will need a lot of money to get that party off the ground, and I can’t see him having it, between the incoming legal trouble and the lack of bankers who will be willing to touch his money with a 5-meter pole.
Scamming the cash meant for that purpose is more likely anyway.
I had forgotten about the oleander oil! I grew up (in Phoenix) with oleander bushes everywhere. We knew from the time we could walk that oleander was poisonous. I was shocked when they trotted out that “cure.”
Same in California. (My grandparents had an oleander tree in their parking. We knew it was poisonous, even if all we could reach was bark-covered trunk.)
The Minnesota GOP is toast. It’s a blue state to begin with despite the panic and handwringing about Hillary’s narrow victory there in 2016 which, after the 2018, looked more like the aberration it likely was. I still believe unwarranted Democratic panic about 2016 was the reason Al Franken was pushed overboard; at that time it appeared the GOP was making gains and could possibly defeat Amy Klobuchar in 2018. But that started to change by mid 2018 and she won in a landslide. Get Mr Pillow involved and the Minnesota GOP will become vestigial.
Give it a few more years and who’s still going to be respected anyway, vis-a-vis Franken? Unsurprisingly for an ex-comedian, he always manages to get the last laugh.
They’ve reached third-party status in CA: “no party stated” has more voters, total, than the GOP-T.
I get the feeling that there’as now a 3 party system – you have the Dems, the GOP and now the TOP (Trump’s Own Party)