All was going swimmingly for multimillionaire ex-addict Mike Lindell until about about four years ago, when he found a drug that’s far more dangerous than crack. It was around that time when the celebrated Moaning Mustache of Mankato became a Donald Trump superfan, and his ultimate fate was sealed.
The now-infamous pillow magnate, whose outsize success depended on 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, is now 100% desperate meat sweats as his once-promising life continues to devolve into a kielbasa-scented cautionary tale. And he has Donald Trump, destroyer of worlds, to thank for it.
Lindell, who by his own admission has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to overturn the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf, is still threatened by billion-dollar-plus lawsuits launched by two voting machine companies he allegedly defamed while attempting to boost Trump’s baseless stolen-election claims. And last October, the attorneys representing him in those suits dropped him over lack of payment.
Now he’s getting evicted. Or his pillows are, anyway.
RELATED STORY: MAGA cultists bet big on Trump’s latest grift
A judge evicted Minnesota-based MyPillow from a facility in Shakopee after the landlord filed a lawsuit claiming that the company, owned by Mike Lindell, was at least $200,000 behind on rent payments.
In the lawsuit, First Industrial, LP claimed the pillow company had defaulted on four months of rent in the last year, and had also not paid rent in February or March of 2024. In all, the Delaware-based real estate firm said it was owed $217,489.74.
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Lindell, who is a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, has faced slew of financial problems as he is in the midst of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, filed by Dominion Voting Systems, saying that he falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. Smartmatic filed a similar defamation lawsuit seeking over $1 billion.
If there’s one lesson every American should have learned by now, it’s don’t get in bed with Trump—either literally or figuratively. It won’t end well.
Of course, Lindell’s comeuppance arrives at an apt time, as hoards of callow Trump fans pump up the new “DJT” stock attached to The Big Liar’s Truth Social platform, which has roughly the earning potential of a nude skinhead busking outside a Bay Area Lululemon.
They’ll learn—as the investors in Trump’s first public company did—that Trump’s grifts are as absurd and empty as his promises. In fact, it would have behooved anyone thinking of investing in Trump’s new stock to research whether he’s ever launched a public company before. And, if he has, to find out what became of it.
And it turns out there’s good reason to believe this stock will eventually tank. Just look at its paltry user base and the grim state of its financials—or the fact that its future is almost entirely dependent on a 77-year-old man who has been down this road before. And Trump’s investors got royally screwed as the shares in his first public company lost 90% of their value in just five years.
While Trump Media may be new, its stock ticker is a throwback to Trump’s only other publicly traded company. Trump bestowed the same initials on his Atlantic City casino business, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, back when that company went public in 1995.
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Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts never turned a profit and ended up in bankruptcy in 2004, wiping out shareholders.
Trump’s company lost money every single year of its existence, putting it more than $600 million in the red — despite owning premier Atlantic City casinos, including the Trump Taj Mahal, a place so opulent Trump called it “the eighth wonder of the world.”
So Trump was ruined then, right? Bwahahahaha. Oh, you naif. There’s a sucker born every minute, and Trump has righteously screwed nearly every one of them.
The Washington Post, June 12, 2016:
In its short life, Trump the company greatly enriched Trump the businessman, paying to have his personal jet piloted and buying heaps of Trump-brand merchandise. Despite losing money every year under Trump’s leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in the year the company’s stock plummeted 70 percent.
Many of those who lost money were Main Street shareholders who believed in the Trump brand, such as Sebastian Pignatello, a retired private investor in Queens. By the time of the 2004 bankruptcy, Pignatello’s 150,000 shares were worth pennies on the dollar.
“He had been pillaging the company all along,” said Pignatello, who joined shareholders in a lawsuit against Trump that has since been settled. “Even his business allies, they were all fair game. He has no qualms about screwing anybody. That’s what he does.”
Noooooooooo! You don’t say.
Of course, Trump’s original public company at least had some tangible assets to fall back on. His new venture is built almost entirely on vulgar non sequiturs and random Catturd posts. That said, it could get a valuable lifeline if Trump ever becomes president again.
As MSNBC columnist Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, notes, the platform would present a serious conflict of interest if the Thousand-Year Trumpian Reich were ever to commence.
Though the new company’s stock opened Tuesday at more than $70 a share, Truth Social alone lost millions a month last year. And the last time a Trump company went public — with the ticker symbol DJT, no less — Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts lost more than $1 billion and went bankrupt. There’s little reason to think that this deal will end well for anyone other than for Trump.
As considerable as investors’ risks are, however, the risk facing the country is even greater. On top of the multiple civil judgments and criminal cases still pending against him, Trump’s third presidential run already threatened to bring back the legion of conflicts of interest surrounding his real estate business. Now, add to that a social media company.
Truth Social is nowhere near as big as X and Facebook, but the 2024 election will surely drive up traffic on the site. And should Trump win, Truth Social will become the principal communication vehicle of the most powerful person in the world. Furthermore, a President Trump would once again control the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates social media. As he reminded us during his past presidency, the federal financial conflict of interest statute does not apply to the president. Truth Social’s larger competitors such as X and Meta will learn to work with Trump — to his advantage of course — or suffer the wrath of a his new administration.
In other words, we could all get screwed by Trump’s new company, even if we’re wise enough to avoid buying what no less an authority than The Wall Street Journal has already dismissed as a meme stock.
Then again, Trump has been fucking over the little guy for decades. To quote the now-far-wiser Pignatello, “That’s what he does.”
And it really is what he does. In June 2016, as the rolling nightmare of the Trump years was just entering its REM cycle, USA Today published a jaw-dropping exposé on Trump’s business practices, which appear to have been singularly focused on ruining the lives of small businesspeople.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
So why do people still throw in with this toxic grifter when it’s become abundantly clear that everything—and everyone—he touches turns to dross? You’ll have to ask the new DJT investors who are currently standing neck-deep in hog shit but have somehow convinced themselves it’s a healing mud bath at an exclusive Manhattan day spa.
After all, if Lindell still can’t see how thoroughly Trump has ruined his life, what chance do these jabronis have?
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