MyPillow CEO Destroys Cancel Culture Snowflakes: Our Best Days Are When They Attack
If you’re the snowflake type and you think you’re going to put Mike Lindell and MyPillow out of business because of his support for the president, he’s got some news that’s going to ruin your day: The more you attack, the more his company prospers.
In case you’re not familiar with Lindell, the MyPillow CEO is the head of President Trump’s re-election effort in Lindell’s native Minnesota.
He also made headlines — most of them negative — when he appeared at the White House in March to announce his company was devoting 75 percent of its manufacturing capacity to making masks.
This would normally be a cause for celebration, but CNN cut away during his remarks in the Rose Garden and other outlets savaged him for using the occasion to say Trump “gave us so much hope” and that “God gave us grace on Nov. 8, 2016, to change the course we were on.”
Lindell is also a potential GOP candidate for governor in Minnesota in 2022; current Democratic-Farmer-Labor Gov. Tim Walz was criticized heavily by Lindell for his leadership in the wake of the riots which erupted after George Floyd died when a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.
“It comes down to we’ve had some very poor leadership from the mayor to the [attorney general] to the governor, the list goes on,” Lindell said in a May interview.
It goes without saying that, in this day and age, this sort of comment puts a pretty big target on MyPillow’s back.
In an interview on Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.” last week, however, Lindell said cancel culture was only helping his brand.
“I double my ads every time they badmouth me,” Lindell said.
“I double my ads every time they badmouth me”
How do companies withstand #cancelculture in 2020? @realMikeLindell of @MyPillowUSA joined us to discuss
WATCH: https://t.co/h9ESNXc8BI pic.twitter.com/d0lfyJW4q4
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) July 26, 2020
“Anyone out there, when they try to do these boycotts and they try to cancel out MyPillow,” they don’t work, Lindell said. And he had advice for anyone in a similar position who might be tempted to bow to the mob.
“I want to tell any business owner that’s out there — here’s what happens,” Lindell said. “Everyone over on the right, everybody buys more than they were going to buy before. And people on the left, they still buy” the product as well.
It’s merely the hardcore activists who are going to stay away, he said.
“It’s that small group, that small, extreme group that’s, you know, ‘Let’s boycott him, let’s boycott him,’ those are the ones you hear from that go, ‘You know, I was going to buy 12 pillows, but I’m not now.’
“You’re lying,” he continued. “You weren’t going to buy any pillows.”
As it turns out, Lindell says the controversy is good for his brand.
“Everyone always asks me, ‘Mike, when’s your busiest day ever?'” Lindell said. “It’s always the day we’re in. As long as you don’t back down to this stuff, this cancel culture and all these boycotts and all this stuff, it’s absolutely amazing how the business goes up every time something that like this happens.”
Full interview here:
As an example of how this works, Lindell referenced Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue, whose business was targeted after he, too, praised the president at a White House event.
“I guarantee you his business is busier than ever,” Lindell said. “And they’re calling for a boycott just because he’s with the president and says good things about the greatest president we’ve ever had.”
Unanue, for those of you wondering, is following Lindell’s lead.
Asked whether he would apologize for his remarks at the event earlier this month, in which he said “[w]e’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” Unanue told Fox News host Laura Ingraham: “Hell no! Hell no!”
Ingraham: So the answer is no. You’re not going to apologize for standing next to President Trump.
Unanue: Hell no pic.twitter.com/7fQ24zwYJR— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) July 11, 2020
Goya is a better test case for Lindell’s theory than MyPillow is. Lindell’s company has always had a conservative corporate identity, whereas Goya Foods was, at least before Unanue’s appearance in the Rose Garden, politically agnostic.
For the moment, this seems to be working out for them: Conservative “buy-cotting” is more than canceling out the cancellation, and until you can show me an example of anyone caring about these tempests in teapots longer than a few weeks, I’d say they’re pretty much safe.
Goya and MyPillow are being targeted merely because their founders dared to praise the president.
Neither is bowing, neither is hurting.
There’s a lesson to be learned there, particularly as more and more brands are going to be asked to accede to the whims of a movement emboldened by victory after victory.
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