CNN senior correspondent Donie O’Sullivan on Friday asserted that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s products are assisting in undermining democracy in the U.S. through advisements with certain right-wing broadcasters.
Lindell’s conservative streaming platform, Frank Speech, hosts broadcasters such as former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former President Donald Trump’s previous advisor Steve Bannon, who promote and seemingly profit from MyPillow on their channels. O’Sullivan on “CNN News Central” claimed Lindell is “subsidiz[ing]” broadcasters who question the 2020 election through MyPillow advertising, arguing that this means his products are undermining democracy. (RELATED: ‘WHY?’: Ex-Trump Official Leaves CNN Panel Shocked Over Refusal To Answer ‘Gotcha’ Question)
WATCH:
CNN Correspondent Says Mike Lindell’s ‘Pillows Are Now Helping To Subvert American Democracy’ pic.twitter.com/3sqaHfCtqf
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“We’re not talking as much about allegations or false allegations of the last election being stolen. But for the world that Mike is living in and the world that he has helped create … he’s helping fund it as well through his pillow codes,” O’Sullivan said.
CNN host Kate Bolduan chimed in to ask whether “the actual pillows are actually part of the conspiracy theory universe.”
“The pillows are now helping to subvert American democracy. So you’ll remember after Jan. 6, Trump and a lot of his supporters got kicked off the major social media platforms,” the correspondent said. “What happened then was this rise of all these alternative social media platforms. Of course, like Truth Social. Lindell himself actually set up his own social media platform with this video streaming service. Rudy Giuliani has a show on there, Steve Bannon is on there, basically … the kind of election denialism band getting back together.”
“They are being subsidized in a way because they are promoting Mike’s pillows, and they all have a pillow code,” he added. “And so if you were an election-denying conspiracy theorist, you might have a code ‘Kate Bolduan.’ And so every time that somebody watches your show, buys the pillow … with your code, you get a cut of it, Mike gets a cut and you can continue to push these lies.”
Several backers of former President Donald Trump told O’Sullivan during a June segment America is a republic, with the correspondent characterizing their answers as an “attack on democracy.”
“There is, of course, a legitimate debate discussion to be had on what form of democracy we have here in the United States, direct democracy, representative democracy, in fact, constitutional republic, which you heard people mentioned in that piece, that is a form of democracy. But look, this is not actually a debate about government, about democracy, it’s an attack on democracy,” he told CNN host Omar Jimenez. “People have heard the warnings that Trump is a danger to democracy, and therefore you have people trying to convince others that, well, the United States isn’t a democracy in the first place, and therefore Trump can’t be a threat.”
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