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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Graig Graziosi

Mike Lindell blames failed voter fraud summit on Big Tech ‘conspiracy’

Getty Images

Another breathless voter fraud extravaganza hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has come and gone.

Last week, Mr Lindell held yet another summit in which he promised he would provide evidence that massive voter fraud took place in 2020 and that former President Donald Trump should be the occupant of the Oval Office.

The results were no different than his three-day live documentary or his 2021 "Cyber Symposium" — lots of promises, zero evidence.

With every failure to deliver on his promises, fewer viewers — and, critically, fewer members of the press — have attended the events. Rather than thinking on why these events are failing to gain any traction, Mr Lindell has instead blamed the media for its failures.

Appearing on his own Facebook show, The Lindell Report, the pillow CEO started his defence by claiming his conference was one of the "most important events in American history," and went on to describe how big tech companies and the media conspired against him.

"This weekend, we had Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duck Duck — all the search engines worked against us there," he said.

He claims he purchased Adwords so that anytime someone searched "Moment of Truth Symposium" or "Mike Lindell's event" it would show an ad for the event directing people to livestreams. He assumed he would see $200,000 resulting from the Adwords, but found they had generated less than $100.

"What they did was totally suppress these events and this Adword," he claimed.

He then complained that Facebook was suppressing him because he had only 300 viewers on his livestream. He then turned his attention to the media, including notably right-wing sites.

"All of the media, including Salem media, Newsmax, Fox, all the media — no one has reached out to me ... Nobody," he said.

He spent a good deal of his time during the event complaining about his portrayal in the media, criticising the New York Times, local broadcasters and newspapers, major networks like Fox News and CNN, and even far-right media outlets like One America News and Newsmax. At one point he even asked a local reporter who covered the event critically to come up on stage so they could "pray for him."

According to the Springfield News-Leader, the number of attendees dropped each day. A spokesperson for the event estimated that at least 1,000 people were in attendance each day, but an on-scene reporter counted a number that was closer to 400.

While it's unclear how many people watched on Mr Lindell's "FrankSpeech" website, the number of livestream watchers on right-wing loved YouTube alternative Rumble topped out at about 1,500.

According to Mr Lindell, the event could only fail if they did not get their word out to the masses. Judging by those numbers, and his criteria, Mr Lindell's latest attempt to re-litigate a nearly two-year-old election appears to have once again failed.

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