MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell blasted Twitter after he was permanently banned from the platform for continuing to spread misinformation abo...
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell blasted Twitter after he was permanently banned from the platform for continuing to spread misinformation about election fraud, saying that if Twitter can silence him, it can silence anyone.
Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday night, at one point Lindell claimed that the social media company was even secretly posting on his behalf while his account was suspended in a previous incident.
After being allowed back onto Twitter following the previous suspension, Lindell continued to spread debunked election fraud theories and claimed that a voting machine company hired trolls and online bots to ruin his business.
That's when Twitter pulled the plug, explaining Lindell's ban from the service on Monday night as being due to 'repeated violations of the company's policy on election misinformation.'
Lindell is the latest conservative voice to be axed or suspended from the platform after the former president himself and other members of his family were booted from the service.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, 59, has spoken out over Twitter after his account was suspended for 'repeated violations' of Twitter policy
Lindell, 59, had his account permanently suspended for 'repeated violations' of Twitter's civic integrity policy, a spokesman said - weeks after Trump himself was banned from the site
The suspensions have sparked debate over whether tech companies should have the power to shut down speech - with some saying that falsehoods need to be squashed, but others saying that Americans should be free to debate without fear of being policed for their thoughts.
Twitter said Lindell had been banned 'due to repeated violations' of its Civic Integrity Policy.
To date, there has been no evidence of voter fraud. But Trump and his supporters say the election was rigged in Joe Biden's favor.
Lindell has stated several times that Dominion Voting Systems somehow switched millions of votes in swing states during November's presidential election.
The allegations are without foundation. The fraud would have needed to involve hundreds of elections officials from both parties.
Lindell continued to back Trump's false claims the 2020 election was rigged and that the social media company was secretly posting on his account
Still, Carlson said Lindell should have the right to air his views.
'If you've now been shut down, it seems pretty clear they are sending a message,' host Tucker Carlson said. 'People in the public recognize they cannot step out of line because you might convince others to do the same. Do you take another message or do you think that's why they're doing this to you?'
Lindell said: 'Last spring, I spoke out from the Rose Garden and I said we should get in our Bibles and reach out to Jesus, stay with our families, we were attacked then.
'This time, about 17 days ago, when someone put up on the Internet actual new machine election fraud, I retweeted it, and they took my Twitter down. Now when they took it down - this is interesting - they didn't take it down all the way. I just couldn't do anything and they were running my Twitter like they were me,' Lindell alleged.
'My friends are going "You're not tweeting very much and when you do…" — I said I'm not doing that! So I try to take it down and I got something from Germany saying these are Twitter rules and you cannot do this, take anything down. So they ran my Twitter for 14 or 15 days.'
It wasn't clear what tweets he was claiming weren't his, as his past tweets are no longer accessible now that Twitter has suspended his account, and Lindell didn't detail anything specific.
Twitter hadn't released any statements in the wake of the allegations aired on Fox on Tuesday night.
The MyPillow CEO then accused Dominion, the voting machine maker, of hiring 'hit groups and bots and trolls' to go after his vendors without providing any evidence.
'I thought the rules were if you think someone is saying something incorrect, you explain how it's incorrect and you convince his audience that you're right and he's wrong,' Carlson said to Lindell. 'When did that go away? When did we decide force was the only answer to disagreement?'
'Right. I can't even livestream on Facebook, they've shut it down,' Lindell responded as he went on to repeat the same false claims about Dominion.
MyPillow supremo Mike Lindell, pictured with Donald Trump at the White House last year, has been permanently banned from Twitter for violating the website's civic integrity rules
'I've been all-in trying to find the machine fraud and I found it. So all these outlets that have been calling me - from the Washington Post, New York Times, every outlet in the country - they go, "Mike Lindell, there's no evidence and he's making fraudulent statements." No, I have the evidence, I dare people to put it on. I dare Dominion to sue me because it would get out faster. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want that, they just want to say: "Oh, you're wrong."'
'They're not making conspiracy theories go away by doing that,' Carlson replied as he failed to challenge Lindell on his debunked fraud conspiracies.
'You don't answer, you don't make people calm down and get reasonable and moderate by censoring them,' Carlson continued. 'You make them way crazier. Of course!'
Lindell is facing a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for his repeated claims that their machines were rigged in favor of Biden.
Dominion already filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president's efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election.
The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives - including Lindell - who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump's loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated.
Meanwhile, Lindell had already been 'canceled' by some of his biggest buyers, including Bed Bath & Beyond and Wayfair, for his continued support of Trump and the 'Stop The Steal' Campaign
Lindell supported Trump's campaigns financially and was his campaign chair in Minnesota. He also spoke several times in praise of the former president, including once in the Rose Garden.
He visited the White House earlier this month but Trump cut their meeting short. Lindell had brought with him notes on martial law and the Insurrection Act, according to reports.
It was unclear which of Lindell's now-deleted tweets had led to his being banned, but Twitter's civic integrity policy tries to moderate misinformation around elections on the site, the company says.
Many of Lindell's claims had been red-flagged by Twitter as disputed, and he deleted a post last month calling on Trump to declare martial law in seven states.
While he said he opposed the Capitol insurrection on January 6, he voiced support for spurious theories that Antifa impostors were involved in the riot.
Even after Biden took office last week, Lindell said he was still holding out hope that the Supreme Court would somehow reinstate Trump.
Lindell is also thought to have political ambitions of his own and reports say he is considering a run for governor of Minnesota, a state that Trump lost narrowly in 2016 and by a bigger margin in 2020.
But Lindell says that Trump told him: 'Mike, if you did it, I would get behind you'.
Lindell's suspension is the latest in a series of high-profile social media bans in the wake of the January 6 riot, in which a violent mob egged on by Trump invaded the halls of Congress to stop Trump's defeat being certified.
It follows Trump's own ban on January 8, along with tens of thousands of followers of a bizarre and unfounded conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
Even before his Twitter ban, Lindell was among the Republicans raging at 'cancel culture' after companies cut ties with MyPillow.
On January 15, Lindell visited Trump in the White House. He brought with him notes on the Insurrection Act and Martial Law. Trump is said to have cut the meeting short within minutes
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