The Daily Signal - #423: From Drug Addiction to CEO of My Pillow

Episode Date: March 21, 2019

The name Mike Lindell may not ring a bell, but if you watch Fox News, you’ve probably seen him. He’s the CEO of My Pillow. Daniel chatted with Mike at the Conservative Political Action about his journey from drug addiction to freedom and faith -- and also, his newfound political voice. Today we’ll share that interview. Plus: A new study finds that trigger warnings are pretty much useless. We also cover these stories:•President Trump signs an executive order designed to promote free speech at colleges. •Trump also signals support for Israeli sovereignty over the long-disputed Golan Heights territory, which lies between Israel and Syria. •Sen. Bernie Sanders wants the U.S. to follow New Zealand, after the country enacted aggressive gun control in wake of the terrorism attack.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, March 22nd. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, the name Michael Lindell may not ring a bell, but if you watch Fox News, you've probably seen him. He's the CEO of My Pillow. I had the chance to talk to Michael at CPAC about his journey from drug addiction to freedom and faith, and also his newfound political voice. Today we'll share that interview. Plus, a new study finds that trigger warnings are pretty much useless. We'll discuss. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and please subscribe.

And a quick announcement, Kate Trinco, my co-host, has been promoted to editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. Kate, congratulations. Thanks, Daniel. I'm excited. And now on to our headlines. President Trump signed an executive order Thursday intended to use tax dollars to promote free speech at public universities.

In America, the very heart of the university's mission is preparing students for life as citizens in a free society, but even as universities have received billions and billions of dollars from taxpayers, many have become increasingly hostile to free speech and to the First Amendment. You see it all the time. You turn on the news and you see things that are horrible. You see people being punched hard in the face, but he didn't go down. I said, you have a better chin than Muhammad Ali, and he had a friend. And you see the cowbell scene. You saw that horrible scene.

That was a disgraceful thing at a school at a university. Under the guise of speech codes and safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, imposed total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today. It's great people. All of that changes starting right now. We're dealing with billions and billions and billions of dollars.

Taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti-First Amendment institutions, and that's exactly what they are, anti-First Amendment. Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech. Today's groundbreaking action is the first and a series of steps. will take to defend students' rights. The Heritage Foundation's Jonathan Butcher says in a statement, the administration's executive order has the right balance. It addresses an urgent problem, free speech that is increasingly threatened on campuses

across the country, while reigning in the potential for federal government overreach. Federal agencies will now be responsible for protecting free expression while staying within the bounds of existing law as directed in this order. Also on Thursday, President Trump signals support for Israeli sovereignty over the long-d disputed Golan Heights territory, which lies between Israel and Syria. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights ever since Syria used it to stage attacks on Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. President Trump tweeted, quote, after 52 years, it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the state of Israel and regional stability, end quote. That tweet comes ahead of a planned visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week

and ahead of the Israeli election, which is set for April 9th. Netanyahu's future has seemed in doubt lately in light of corruption allegations, though Trump's announcement could give him a critical boost. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced an extensive ban on guns in the wake of the terrorist, attack that devastated the country via the Associated Press. Today I'm announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons. We will also ban all assault rifles. We will ban all Kai capacity magazines.

We will ban all parts with the ability to convert semi-automatic or any other type of firearm into a military-style semi-automatic weapon. We will ban parts that cause a firearm to generate semi-automatic, automatic, or close to automatic gunfire. In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country. It's about all of us. It's in the national interest and it's about safety. Some Americans applauded New Zealand's move. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, tweeted, Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like.

Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, tweeted, this is what real action to stop gun violence looks like. We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA, and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States. Well, the ISIS Caliphate is no more. Fox News reported on Thursday that the last ISIS stronghold in Syria has been liberated by U.S.-backed forces, bringing to an end the four-and-a-half-year reign of terror that once engulfed the region. None of the Caliphate's main leaders have been captured alive, though tens of thousands of ISIS fighters are now being held in prison camps. The local Syrian defense forces plan to prosecute them. But fears remain over what may remain of ISIS's ideology. despite its military defeat. As the Caliphate weakened in recent months, its leaders urged supporters to launch insurgent strikes in foreign countries, feeding concern that the ideology that drove ISIS has yet to be defeated. The House Oversight Committee, led by Democrat Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland,

is saying that White House officials are violating the rules when it comes to email. According to the committee, Abby Lowell, a lawyer for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, says Kushner has used WhatsApp for government-related communications, and Ivanka Trump has not forwarded all government-related emails sent to her personal email to her official email. The committee also alleges that Steve Bannon, former advisor to President Trump, and K.T. McFarland, former Deputy National Security Advisor, quote, conducted official business on their personal email accounts relating to transfer of sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, end quote.

Cummings is asking the White House to provide documents related to these concerns, by March 28th. Well, Jimmy Carter this week became the oldest man to have held the presidency, surpassing George H.W. Bush, who passed away last fall at the age of 94 years and five months. Carter surpassed that age on Thursday, and he's still very active. In probably one of the bluest cities in America, plenty of people don't think they can afford to live there. Four out of ten New Yorkers don't think they can afford to live in New York State, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

According to Investopedia, the average rent for an apartment in Manhattan is 3,667 a month, and the average apartment size is 703 feet, hardly enough for a family. Well, Jordan Peterson has never been one to kow to anyone's ideology, and that's getting him into trouble with the University of Cambridge. Earlier this week, Cambridge canceled Peterson's visiting fellowship at its divinity school, following an outcry from students. The Cambridge spokesperson told the guardian that the school is, quote, an inclusive environment, and we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot, end quote.

Well, Peterson has made a living going after just that kind of political correctness, selling out stadiums around the world with his talks on personal responsibility, religion, and psychology. And Kate, I actually checked his tour last year. It was all pretty much sold out. This year, there's not much of a tour on his website. So maybe this canceled fellowship will give him some more tour time. Yeah, and actually, if you're a big fan of Jordan Peterson, the Heritage Foundation is hosting him in New York City on April 2nd. So be sure to check out that event.

Well, up next, my interview with CEO of My Pillow, Michael Lendell. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Well, I'm joined here at CPAC by Michael Lindell. You may have seen him on the numerous commercials on Fox News Channel. He is CEO of My Pillow Incorporated. And Michael, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, it's great to be here. This is amazing. So, Michael, you've got such a story to tell about how you became an entrepreneur and then became entered politics. Before we get into some of your recent involvements, I know you've helped finance a pro-life movie. We're going to talk about that. But I want to ask you first, how did you become an entrepreneur?

Well, I've always been an entrepreneur. It goes back. I think my first two jobs were to drive-in theater and a grocery store. And I actually ended up getting fired at the grocery store. There were different things that I'd get an argument with the owner. And he said, if you don't like it, Mike, why don't you go get your own business someday and you can do what you want? Well, then I started doing different things. My sister flooded a two-story building.

with her water bed and I became a carpet cleaner. So I started just, my entrepreneur, you'd see a problem, I would find a solution, reverse engineer it and start. So I had lunch wagon business. I raised pigs at one time. I had the carpet cleaning. I had small town bars and list a lot of different entrepreneurial things. I never worked for anybody after that time.

And then my pillow. How did that get started? My pillow came in 2004. I had a dream. I was a dream, and I believe it came right from God. I actually dreamt up the name first. There weren't any Mize back then that I know of. And I wrote my pillow all over the upstairs and different ways to write it.

And one of my daughters came upstairs. She says, Dad, what are you doing? She's like 10 or 11 years old. And I go, I'm going to vent this pillow. It's going to be called my pill. It's going to change the world. She grabbed her glass of water two in the morning. She says, that's really random, Dad, move back downstairs.

Wow, how about that? And then all these years later, you're... Yeah, it took it. about a year and a half to invent. When I finally got invented, I was turned down everywhere. I didn't give up, and I ended up doing home shows and fairs for years, and I lost everything. I was also a crack cocaine addict. I don't know that. And I was free to that, by the grace of God, on January 16, 2009. When I went to do our first infomercial, I said, if nobody's going to take us at the box stores and stuff, why don't I bring it right to the people? And I did an infomercial. I said,

I want it to be real. I wanted to be a real audience, just me and a friend of mine. And I was told by everybody, though, that'll never work. You've got to have an actor and all this stuff. And the night before, they brought him this producer, and he's texting the other guy when we were doing our reads. He said, this guy is the worst I've ever seen. He's never going to make it.

Why did you even bring me up here? Well, the next day, we did it, and he was kind of right. It took nine takes for the first line. And finally, I said, can you bring in a table? And we'll take down the teleprompter. I just want to do it naturally. And we did it. And aired October 7, 2011.

I had about 10 employees. And 40 days later, I had 500. Wow. Well, I'd say that success. I'd say that's working. Yeah, it was amazing. So tell me about your transition into speaking on politics. You obviously businessman, but how did that transition happen?

What I did is in the summer of 2015, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president, that sparked my interest. I was the next crack addict. I didn't know anything about politics, but I looked up and, you know, all these things to study what it was then. You know, what's a liberal, what's a conservative? I had no idea. I know what I am.

I mean, I can't believe what a divide there is of the common sense versus what works. And then it got to be a bunch of divine appointments that year. In the summer of 2016, I got an email, invited me by Donald Trump to meet him at Trump Tower in New York City on August 15, 2000. And I went there with hope. I walked in, I met him for probably a half hour, 40 minutes.

We talked about everything from God to inner cities to the foundation thing. I was working on my addiction platform. He talked about Mike, I'm so proud of your made in America. This is what I want. I want to bring the jobs back. I walked out of there and I said, this guy is going to be the best president in history. But I, you know, for me to go all in, I still did one more thing. I went and talked to his employees.

they were like talking to a My Pillo employee. I've never seen that in another company. You can really judge the company's owner or the owner of the CEO by their employees. How well they like him and what they do. And his employees, every one of them was saying the guy is the real deal. He's going to get it done. And I'll tell you what, I'm so proud of everything he's done. I feel like I see my friends all out to my side.

I told you, I told you. Well, what kind of responses have you gotten from folks, you know, from your support? Have you gotten backlash? Oh, yeah. Right away when I went all in. after that meeting. I had, the better business field gate went from an A plus to an F for my pillow. I was attacked in every which way you could imagine.

But you know what? All I did was raise my popularity because it's what I believe in. I've done my due diligence. You're not changing my mind. He was picked by God for such a time as this, and I know that with all my heart. Now it doesn't happen anymore where they're going, oh, that's just Mike. He's not going to change. He's got the president's back.

And you know what? I hear it from people all the time. Out of 1,000 people, 998 will come up to me and say, wow, Mike, way to back our president. He's the greatest president. We're praying for him. And maybe one or two will come up and go, we love what you're doing, Mike,

but you're aligning yourself with this, the worst person. And I'll start telling him about him, and they'll run away going, you know, look around like they're the only one in the room. Yeah. What do you think is the biggest and the most important change that he's brought to America? I think he's gotten rid of,

political correctness. I think that was horrible, the direction that was going. When I, I think that he's brought consumer confidence back at an all-time high, which is so important. The jobs he's brought back, the economy, gas low, stock market high.

But entrepreneurs like myself out there taking chances now because they can. They have a safety net. There's careers being formed out there. Higher wages. I mean, I could go on and on and on. Everything he's done, promises made, promises kept. The guy is absolutely, absolutely amazing. It's a businessman. He's a pragmatic,

conservative, amazing common sense president. That's what we've always needed. Well, I've also going to ask you about the movie that you've helped finance unplanned coming out later in March, I believe. March 29. March 29. So how did you get involved in that? Yeah, that was last spring, and these producers reached out to me and said, yeah, Mike, they got a hold of me, said, we prayed about this, and we'd like you to be in our movie. And I said, well, what's it about? They told me it's about a true story of this Abby Johnson. I was a director of Planned Parenthood,

and she left there after a couple, two, three, four of how many years, and when she finally seen the horrible things that were going on, and she's seen a real live later term abortion, and she just couldn't, you know, when she left, she was gone after by them, and it's a very powerful true story. said, you know what, I'm not just going to have a cameo. I'm going to back this movie with the finance.

And we filmed it in a secret place in Oklahoma, I believe it was. And it was very, I didn't realize what great timing right now with what's going on. That's God's time. You can't even make this up. It's coming out March 29th and all these terrible things going on where they're killing babies and coming up with this thing even after they're, you know, even after they're born now. I mean, how horrific. Yeah.

Well, I understand that they've given a movie an R rating. How does that happen? Yeah, this is R rating. I mean, it's just another attack. That's from the Hollywood folks, right? What? That's from the Hollywood people? Yeah, Hollywood people.

They give it an R. And you know what? I sitting back and I look again, like, you know, your 15-year-old can go get an abortion without permission from their parents, but they have to go see this movie. They need to go with their parents. What is wrong with this? You know, do you talk about a block and resistance and everything, you know, it says everything good that seems to come. comes our way that the evil and wants to destroy it. Well, the movie comes out March 29th, correct?

March 29th. Yeah, March 29th. Everybody go their opening day. You know, I want the message to get out there. For me, this has such a powerful message. I wanted to change hearts and help stop this horrific abortions going on in our country. And hopefully all these seeds will be planted in a huge way. And we'll all unite together, change other people.

hearts and get this stopped. Absolutely. Well, Michael Lindell, CEO of my pillow, thanks for taking the time to sit down. It's an honor to be on your show. Thank you. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, and I'm inviting you to share your thoughts with us. Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205, or email us at letters atdailysignal.com. Yours could be featured on the DailySignal podcast. A new study done by professors from the University of Y. Caddo and the John Jay College at City University of New York found trigger warnings aren't particularly useful. Quote, from the study, trigger warnings had trivial effects. People reported similar levels of negative effect, intrusions, and avoidance, regardless of whether they had received a trigger warning.

Moreover, these patterns were similar among people with a history of trauma. These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful. nor harmful, end quote. The study was published in clinical psychological science. Daniel, what do you think? So I kind of think that trigger warnings have always been kind of a, you know, way of covering yourself if people get upset. So you can just say, well, I gave you a trigger warning,

so you should have left the room or covered your ears or something. I don't know. I just, it always, I mean, I think most people would admit it's, it's been, it's superficial, you know, but, but I don't know, maybe, I'd be curious though if this is covering people who the point of a trigger warning is to kind of like leave right or to cover your ears or something if you think you're going to be offended.

I thought it was more because I was actually looking up like an old op-ed in New York Times from 16 or 15 by a professor to try to remember like yeah all the thinking behind this and they were saying it wasn't for someone to leave but to sort of mentally steal themselves. Like there is going to be something of upsetting and it's going to involve this. And actually, sort of a long line's I was thinking was she, I believe that it was a female professor, mentioned like she might, for instance, note that there

is going to be a vivid description of a sexual assault and something. And I don't know, I went to a very conservative college where we basically didn't read anything published past 1950, but why do students necessarily need to read this? Like that was sort of, I was thinking in a weird way, like, why, I mean, all these things, if you're having trigger warnings for like, you know, the Western classics or something, that's one thing. But, you know, a lot of modern art and literature and movies, I think, is too graphic. And it sort of made me wonder, like, maybe it's fair that it's psychologically harmful to some people. Yeah. So I wonder what they're, you know, what people would respond with, like, okay, we have this study. Instead of trigger warnings,

should we just, well, I mean, what do you do? You tell people to, If you think you're going to be offended by this, then don't read it or don't watch it. Because we've sort of had like a version of trigger warnings for a long time, which is, you know, viewer discretion advised, that kind of thing. You know, I mean, at least I grew up with that. But I think that's like an actual helpful warning because, you know, you're going to keep your kids from watching. I mean, I don't, I never was against trigger warnings in the same way a lot of people were. I mean, I don't know if I thought they were a great idea. But I mean, if they're not really helpful, then I certainly see the argument for not necessarily bringing them up.

I mean, I guess long term, I'm not an expert in trauma or PTSD, but I assume it would be building up resiliency, like knowing you are going to have reminders of this horrible thing. You know, if you are dealing with PTSD from combat, it's not like you're never going to pass someone playing a violent video game or something. So I suppose it's learning to cope with it. But yeah, I don't know. It's still for me. I'm just like, what exactly is going on in these college curriculums that it's this vivid and this graphic? Because, you know, there's plenty of classic literature that I think can stir up strong emotions. But it doesn't, it doesn't, I mean, generally it's not very, Shakespeare does not get into graphic accounts, for instance.

Well, that's a good place to leave things. But before we go, we are going to leave you with a voicemail message left by one of our very kind listeners who disagreed with our takes on Captain Marvel film. Good morning, Daily Signal. Just listen to the podcast for yesterday. Great interview with the president-elect. It was fantastic to listen to and that perspective come through. Anyway, the real reason that I called was the review that Captain Marvel got. I, too, I'm an MCU fan, but I take it a little bit differently. I don't go in with any expectations whatsoever by the product that they actually would recommend it for anybody and, you know, not going to necessarily train. It put forward the store. It's clunky. It still put forward the story. And I thought it did a fantastic job of telling that story. Anyway, I hope you guys have a great weekend. Happy Friday.

Bye-bye. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us feedback. Rob and Rachel will be with you on Monday. You've been listening to The Daily Signal Podcast.

Podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.