Newsmax is among several conservative outlets threatened with lawsuits over false claims about voting machines
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On Tuesday, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell made an appearance on Newsmax’s “American Agenda” to help the network advance disingenuous claims of “cancel culture” inspired by the recent suspension of his Twitter account.
But unfortunately Lindell — a conspiracy theorist who supported the violent insurrection incited by Donald Trump — was unable to refrain from shouting the kinds of lies that got him kicked off the social media site in the first place. And it got to the point that one of the show’s co-hosts just walked off in the middle of the interview after several unsuccessful attempts to save Lindell — and Newsmax — from himself.
Now, Lindell was banned from Twitter in late January for continuing to spread conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election, and when he subsequently tried to use the MyPillow account to accuse Twitter of being actively involved in that nonexistent fraud, Twitter suspended that as well. Despite how cut and dry the matter is, “American Agenda” apparently decided he’d be the right person to have on air to discuss “cancel culture.” And well, that sort of backfired.
“What happened with your Twitter account and the company pages,” “American Agenda” cohost Heather Childers asked.
“We have all the election fraud with the voting machines, we have 100% proof,” Lindell tried to say. This prompted an interruption by cohost Bob Sellers.
“Mike, you’re talking about machines that… we at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those kinds of allegations,” Sellers said. “We just want to let people know there’s nothing substantive that we’ve seen.” This did little to deter Lindell, who started ranting again even before Sellers finished. So it was that as Sellers continued to shout false claims about voter fraud, Sellers read what appears to be the official statement from the network affirming that the election was legitimate.
Now, it’s worth noting here that until mid December, Newsmax was a major proponent of the kinds of lies Lindell was attempting to spread. This changed after Dominion Voting Systems threatened to sue Newsmax and several other right wing media outlets for accusing the company of actively conducting election fraud.
Shortly after, a separate voting machine company, Smartmatic, also threatened to sue. Newsmax clearly didn’t think those baseless accusations would hold up in court, because it immediately ordered all of its shows to cease spreading those lies.
Which brings us back to Lindell, who by the way was banned from Twitter for making the same baseless claims that prompted Sellers to read that legal statement. Sellers tried to redirect Lindell to talk about “cancel culture” instead, but Lindell pressed on. “You have been suppressed, you have been suppressed, just like Twitter,” Lindell yelled at Sellers.
Sellers continued his attempt to reframe the conversation around “cancel culture,” asking Lindell if he thought his ban from Twitter would be temporary. No dice there either; Lindell just doubled down.
“No, I want it to be a permanent [ban], because they did this because I was reviewing all the evidence on Friday of all the election fraud with these machines. So I’m sorry if you don’t think it’s real, it’s real. You’re as bad as Twitter.”
Sellers at this point said “can I ask our producers, can we get out of here please? I don’t want to have to keep going over this.”
Childers tried to calm Lindell down, saying “hold on a second,” but Sellers had clearly had enough and he just stood up and walked out of the frame.
This isn’t the first time Lindell has caused problems on Newsmax’s live shows — he was cut off by host Sebastian Gorka in December for the same reason. We get it though, it sure is weird how the network continues to invite someone who constantly spreads lies about the 2020 election only for him to use his appearances to spread lies about the 2020 election.
Check out the video, courtesy of Media Matters reporter Jason Campbell, below:
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