Mike Lindell: Cocaine Cowboy, Courtroom Loser (Premium E295) Sample
00:00Thank you.If you're hearing this, well done.You've found a way to connect to the internet.Welcome to the QAA podcast, Premium Episode 295.Mike Lindell, Cocaine Cowboy, Courtroom Loser.As always, we are your host, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.The United States has produced some great writers who have artfully expressed the beauty, the ugliness,and the grand drama of this land and this nation.
00:58But I think there is a case to be made that the writer that really shaped how Americans think about what it means to be an American isn't Mark Twain or Melville or Steinbeck or John Dos Passos, let's say.It's Horatio Alger, the late 19th century Massachusetts-based writer who produced didactic tales about young, impoverished boys who rise above their station to middle-class respectability through sheer pluck, personal virtue, and determination.That's the story of this podcast.Yeah, it is.That's what we did.His tale spoke to and fed the American fantasy that regardless of where you are in life,you can rise to extraordinary heights in any field of your choosing if you just dream big,work hard, and believe in yourself.
01:40Now, grand ambitions can be inspiring and noble, but one of several flaws with Horatio Alger's talesis that they ignore the dark side of the success formula.Sometimes you can dream so big that you enter the world of delusional fantasy,Sometimes working hard on the wrong project makes society worse instead of better.And sometimes it's possible to believe in yourself so much that you smother the kind of self-reflection that might prevent you from harming both yourself and innocent people.Dude, are you fucking, is this like about me?Is this episode about me?So today we're going to talk about a favorite recurring character on this podcast.
02:15And someone I believe to be Horatio Alger's monster.My Pellor CEO, Mike Lindell.Wait, so that's the Frankenstein's monster?that's the relationship there?Yeah, yeah, well, it's like, yeah.It's, you wanted to produce, you know,young men who, like, you were able to work hardand believe in themselves, but he produced something ugly
02:35in Mike Lindell.You know, I mean, I think Mike Lindell does have the structureof, like, a Universal Studios monster.I'm not sure if it's friend of Frankenstein monster.Yeah, that is kind of true.Like, I feel like his structure just lends itself to something.We can work with it.Wide shoulders, sort of high forehead.
02:51Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Very strange posture.Yeah, yeah, yeah.Lindell is a man from the tiny town of Chaska, Minnesota, who came up with the idea for a pillow company in the midst of a delirious blackout cocaine bender.I'm going to tell you something right now.When you lay your head down on that pillow, as I did in a cheap hotel recently, and then I kind of took the, I, like, looked under the cover and it said my pillow.This feel, it feels like they, you just put crumpled up paper inside like a fucking, like, cloth container.They're horrible.
03:19They're extremely lumpy.Very lumpy pillows, yeah.By Lindell's own reckoning, he doesn't recall exactly what inspired his idea.I got up in the middle of the night.It was about two in the morning, and I had my pillow written everywhere in the kitchen and all over the house.What does he mean by that?Did he go into a fucking stimulant psychosis?Yes, yes.
03:40Was it like red rum, red rum, red rum, red rum, but it was my pillow, my pillow.I'm sorry, but like when you wake up the next morning and you see the words my pillow, you realize you don't have an idea.You're just you just have an object that everyone already knowsYou've just lost your sort of special sleeping item, you knowLike you fucking wake up and it says my mug everywhere in the houseYou don't think you fucking came up with an idea for mugsYeah, if he if he woke up and there was a picture of like a pillow outlineWith lots of like crumpled up pieces of paper inside of it
04:11Then maybe just just fucking completely out of his mind being likeOh, there's a lot of pillows in the worldBut this one's my pillowYou know he probably got so delirioushe couldn't sleep and he was so exhaustedto be like, oh, what do I need? I need my pillow.I need my pillow. My pillow. My pillow. I need it. I need it back.And that's how I came up with my company. Do not trust them.
04:37That neurotoxicity fueled inspirationturned into a pillow empire that made him a very wealthy man.Wealth that he squandered donating to far-right griftersthat treated him like a cash cow,chasing nonsense conspiracy theories about election fraud,supporting silly media ventures,and now by being required to pay damagesthrough losing a defamation lawsuit.
04:57You're forgetting he made like four fucking moviesthat we're all trying to do the exact same thing.And they were all called like, what was it?Like absolute truth, refutable truth,the truth of the truth.Uncompromisable truth.Yeah.I think that falls under the media ventures.
05:12I guess so, but like that is a particularly psychotic thing.Like even if you're investing in things,Who makes four documentaries about the exact same thing?He was, yeah, you just thoroughly convinced that.It's like, oh, this should work.I'll just do it the exact same thing.Just one last documentary.It's the fourth.
05:27That's the one that's going to unlock this whole situation.Well, fellas, I thought we could do it with three, but it turns out we're going to needone more movie.Yeah.Though at his peak, Lindell was worth over $200 million personally.It means nothing.The money doesn't mean anything.He is an obsessive addict.
05:45I recognize him.I am him.He recently told the court that he and his company face a combined $70 million in debt and ongoing garnishment from the IRS.Bro, you fucking imagine taking all that money and gambling instead.That's what you should have fucking done, dumbass.I mean, based on what I've read in the book, he probably would have been better off.Yeah, that's what I'm saying.You would have had a lot more fun than, like, making four documentaries.
06:08He's like, none of that shit's fun.He had to hire that weird little fucking known guy for his TV station.It was not a good life.I have a feeling like the joy of being part of what he saw as a righteous cause gave him more happy chemicals in his brain than gambling.Yeah, it's like, oh, I'm not, you know, I'm not obsessive at all.I'm just telling the president to invoke martial law.So today, first, I'm going to talk about Lindell's recent loss in his defamation suit filed by Eric Coomer, which is why Lindell has been ordered to pay nearly $2.3 million in damages.Okay, so I will obviously not do this again, but I do need to stop for him.
06:45moment and say, Coomer. Ha, ha, ha. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Eric. I know you listen.Yeah. Your name is very funny. And, you know, I will say one of things. Like, congratulate, I'm sorry you had to go through. He is a listener of the show. Sorry, I had to go through. It's congratulations on your victory. And it's, it is funny. It's made funnier by the fact that your name is technically Dr. Coomer. Okay. Dude, come on. Come on. Exactly. Come on.It's like, it's like, well, it's not fair.It's not fair.It's like you're shoving a barrel full of fish towards me.And then to better understand how it got to this point,Jake has read Lindell's autobiography,What Are the Odds from Crack Addick to CEO?
07:29Boy, yeah, I hope I can't wait to see what you found for us, Jakey.It's sad because he had to do the digital version,but I have the original where if you move the cover,it changes between his crack phase and his new phase.Yeah, it's that old technology of kind of,of like hologram plastic car like 8 by 10 you know what I mean where you look how disturbing it is whenyou do it fast yeah it's the it's the sad clown and then the happy clown but on the front of lindel'sbook it's yeah it's crack addict and then on the back it's like him talking and he's happy and then
07:57it's him as a child oh okay so he used the back because he's like yeah I mean we're going tohave the technology on the back there's also a cross that almost looks like holographic onthe binding here look we're not going to lie it's a high tech book yeah this is fuckingthis is a startup I think this book is actually a startupYou've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.For access to the full episode as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries,go to patreon.com slash QAA.Travis, why is that such a good deal?
08:28Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries.That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of trickle-down with me, Travis Vue.It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.Travis, for once, I agree with you.And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA.Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact.You're so right, Jake.
09:08We love and appreciate all of our listeners.Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude maybe?That's not true. The part about be crying, not me being grateful. I'm very grateful.
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