MyPillow and the War on Trumpservatism

Let’s make two things perfectly clear: I didn’t buy my first MyPillow because Mike Lindell is a Trumpservative. But I won’t go back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond because Mike Lindell is a Trumpservative.

I was not aware of any political affiliation for Mr. Lindell when commercials for the pillow began flooding the Fox News and MeTV channels. I figured that the Lindell plan was to saturate his spots on channels of interest to older folks. It was sheer repetition that prompted me to give MyPillow a try. All Mike’s talk about “patented fill” and “years in development” suggested that this was a pretty damn special pillow. The fact that the pillows were made in U.S.A. didn’t hurt; my consumerist impulses were tweaked.

And the commercials were ubiquitous. Not an hour of Hannity or a rerun of Gomer Pyle USMC went by without a visit from Mike. Unlike other some other viewers, I didn’t mind the one where Mike is inside the medicine cabinet. It was weird in an interesting way. And it was funny later in the commercial when Mike adjusts a competitor’s pillow and makes his potential customer more comfortable. “That’s better,” says the actor, but Mike says, “Yeah, but I’m not going to stand here and hold it all night.” I was not a fan of the spot where Mike breaks in and says, “I’m interrupting this commercial…” You shouldn’t interrupt a commercial with an expanded commercial.

Anyway, I needed new pillows to go with my new NASA memory-foam bed, and since I like to materially see products before I purchase them, I located the prime distributor of MyPillow in my area, Bed, Bath, and Beyond. There, in a pillow department as big as a convenience store, I located Mike’s pillows, packaged in nice boxes, and tossed two in my cart. I felt rather superior at the check-stand, hoping other customers queued-up with their cut-rate Chinese purchases were noticing the two big boxes–$50 each–which filled my shopping cart.

I’m hard on a pillow. I tend to beat them into shape. And I must say, MyPillows are the best pillows I’ve ever had. Unless I’m worried to death about, say, election fraud, a border invasion, or the Biden Administration generally, I always fall right to sleep. I can beat the hell out of MyPillow and that patented fill always bounces back.

I would go on to purchase other MyPillows at BBB as gifts, and for my guest bedroom. I even purchased one of the travel pillows as a gag gift. My son-in-law, a conservative, always scoffed at Lindell’s marketing strategy. He thought it was madness to pay $50 for a pillow, and laughed at me. For his birthday I fashioned a computer greeting card with Mike Lindell holding one of his pillows on the front, and a nice message inside. I carefully wrapped the travel pillow and presented it at a family party, getting the last laugh.

(When it became widely known that Lindell supported Trump, my son-in-law admitted that he “likes the guy,” but still thinks $50 is too much to pay for a pillow.)

The proverbials hit the fan when Lindell’s support for former President Trump heatedly carried over after the November election. Dominion Voting Systems sued Lindell for his disparagement of their voting machines, threatening to carve the tidy sum of $1.3 billion of profit out of MyPillow’s coffers. In a statement updated on the very day I write this piece, Dominion reaffirms the accuracy of their voting machines and the ethics of their business.

Just this April, Lindell countersued for $1.6 billion, saying in effect that the statements made about Dominion were his own, and cannot be attributed for the purposes of a lawsuit to expose the MyPillow corporation. Lindell further claims that the refusal of some major retail chains and online sellers to carry his products as a result of his questions about the election have cost his company $65 million.

It enough to ruin a good night’s sleep.

Back on the retail front, in the wake of my original MyPillow purchases, Lindell’s company began introducing all kinds of other products. So far, none of them have tweaked my interest the way the pillows did. My dog passed in 2010, and I’m busy, so I’m not in the market for another dog or MyPillow dog bed just yet. I’m not going to put a MyPillow topper over my awesome NASA memory foam. I don’t see myself as a candidate for Giza Dream Sheets—I like my Fred Meyer flannels with the grizzly bears and pine trees. And I certainly have no use for Mike’s latest venture, the MyPillow slipper.

Tangentially, although I greatly respect the strength he showed, I have zero interest in Mr. Lindell’s battle with drugs. As a child of the 60s and huge rock music fan, I really don’t need to hear about anyone’s struggle with sobriety ever again.

But I’m a MyPillow guy for life. What’s not to like? Mike Lindell fought for a president he believed in, and so did I. He makes a great pillow and puts people to work right here in the U.S.A.

One thing is for sure: I had never stepped foot in a Bed, Bath, and Beyond before MyPillow, and, since the chain has banned Mike’s products in the spurious name of anti-Trumpservatism, I will never shop there again. Cancel-culture and politically-driven boycotting suck, but conservatives have been placed in the position of needing to have it work both ways when necessary.

I can get bath mats at Fred Meyer.