Fox News appears to have cut ties with the conservative bedding brand My Pillow, once one of the network’s largest and most prominent advertisers.
My Pillow Founder and CEO Mike Lindell announced that the right-wing news network revoked their advertising deals with the brand on Thursday during a broadcast of the Steve Bannon “War Room” show. According to data from the progressive watchdog Media Matters My Pillow appears to have been the leading advertiser across Fox News in 2023. The group added that “MyPillow’s most recent ad appears to have run in December 2023 based on preliminary 2024 data.”
“I’m bringing some disturbing news,” Lindell told Bannon. “As you know Steve, ever since I was speaking out about our election platforms since January of ‘21, they’ve been attacking my company My Pillow with cancel culture … [and now] Fox News just canceled My Pillow.”
Lindell added that he had not been given an explicit reason for the cancellation, but speculated that the rupture might have been motivated by Monday’s Iowa caucuses, the first battle of the 2024 Republican primary. “They know my brand is there right with our great real president Donald Trump,” Lindell added. “Maybe it’s because I brought Lou Dobbs over to my Lindell TV Network this week, but everything is just alarming and suspicious. Why now just out of the blue ‘you’re canceled.”
“I’m beside myself, I don’t know what to say,” Lindell said, claiming that he’s given the network “hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars” over the years.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
In recent years, Lindell has been embroiled in a series of lawsuits stemming from his public peddling of conspiracy theories on behalf of former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss. In April of last year, Lindell was ordered to pay $5 million to Robert Zeidman, a Trump voter who debunked false claims of Chinese election interference made by Lindell.
Lindell has also been sued by both Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two election hardware and software manufacturers who were the victims of libelous conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the 2020 election. In April, Fox News agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by Dominion which included an astounding $787.5 million payment to the company. In the aftermath of the settlement, the network has attempted to crack down on its overt endorsements of election conspiracies, something Lindell has adamantly refused to do.
Lindell has repeatedly claimed that the cost of battling these ongoing lawsuits is bleeding his company dry. In January of last year, Lindell asserted that his company had “lost $100 million in retailers.” He later told Bannon that “the [voting] machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow.” In October, Lindell confirmed to The Daily Beast that the company had implemented a one-month pause from advertising on cable networks, and cited the company’s financial struggles as the reason for the break.
It seems that hiatus may now be permanent, and while cutting ties with Lindell may let Fox News sleep a little easier, the ongoing financial troubles faced by My Pillow are likely keeping the “My Pillow Guy” up at night.
