The founding CEO of My Pillow and FrankSpeech told RedState why he is buying gold, about his relationship with former President Donald J. Trump, and how his company was deplatformed because he challenged how the 2020 election was run and certified.

“I think before, back when I bought gold many times and for a rainy day, and I would get those rainy days, and I'd have it when I needed it, so it was great,” said Mike Lindell, who was speaking about gold in his personal capacity, and not as a financial advisor, in an exclusive conversation.

“Whether you think it’s end times or not—I just think now, bad things are happening to our economy and our country,” he said.

When President Joseph R. Biden took office, gold was trading at roughly $1,860 per troy ounce, and at the close of trading on May 16, the yellow metal was at roughly $2,380, an increase of $520. 

To be fair to Biden, gold was at $1,830 on Oct. 3, so the bull run really took off in the last six months, perhaps as it became evident that the Federal Reserve was not cutting interest rates as quickly as Wall Street expected.

Gold is traded in troy ounces, which are 10 percent heavier than the standard ounce—an excellent thing to know if you are selling gold and the lady breaks out a postal scale. The standard gold brick is 400 troy ounces, which means if you need a favor from Sen. Robert Menendez (D.-NJ), it will run you about $952,000 per brick.

My RedState colleague Jeff Charles wrote about how Menendez said his concern was intergenerational trauma, but Lindell's rationale is more grounded in current events.

Lindell said he has investments in different places, but now he is serious about buying gold.

“When you see things that are happening now,” he said. “These anomalies that have happened in our country and around the world for that matter, I think people get into fear, and they're going: ‘Hey, I got to go where I've heard my money can be trusted and safe.’”

He said one advantage of gold over Bitcoin is that gold cannot be deleted with the flick of a switch.

“I'll tell you what, your money's safe,” he said. “This is like the biggest insurance policy you can ever do for yourself, and that’s for me.”

“It's physical, and if people look, it seems like it's a constant kind of bull market, too,” he said. 

“You have its dips and ups and downs, and people say: ‘Well, if Donald Trump gets in, the economy is just going to go through the roof and everything, and then: “Gee, would gold go down?’”

Lindell said he takes the long view.

“I learned a lot, too, with gold, what you can do now with the IRAs and the retirement things to be able to transfer that, where you don't pay taxes on when it's a transfer,” he said.

“I didn't know anything of that, and I had my own family members calling, and I'm going: “Hey, I just got a hold of these gold guys, and I think you can do this.’ I found out you could.”

“What happens if the economy turns around and goes up? Well, it's a win-win, I think it's a win-win, no matter what you've got,” he said.

“People are afraid of banks collapsing,” he said. “They're afraid of all kinds of things now.”

The Mankato, Minnesota, native said MyPillow has also bought gold for its corporate account. 

“I’ve done this before, myself personally and with MyPillow,” he said. 

“We've done it year after year at different times, and to get it for a safety net and for security,” he said. “We as a company went and bought gold because we get it. It's safe. It's safe. I think it's the safest place to put your money.”

Lindell: Trump confident he can win enough to beat election fraud

Lindell said he is grateful for former President Donald J. Trump’s friendship.

“We compare notes all the time, both of us—I think we feed off each other’s optimism every time we talk,” he said. 

The MyPillow founder said an example of their relationship was when he met up with Trump at his April 2 Green Bay, Wisconsin, rally.

"I was with him at a rally in Green Bay,” he said. “I talked to him for quite a bit there, and he’s just like me. He’s always optimistic now.”

Lindell said Trump is aware of the challenges ahead. “He says: ‘Mike, the only way that I can lose is if they steal it again.'"

After he told the former president that he agreed, Trump asked: "Well, are we going to have enough of our election, secure enough of our election platform secure?”

Lindell said he also told Trump the more the Democrats go after him, the stronger he gets.

“I told him: ‘The more they attack him--you keep getting attacked like this, people are pouring into this bucket of common sense, which is the MAGA bucket—pretty soon, you’re going to end up with more votes than voters like Pennsylvania.”

Lindell was alluding to the charge that in 2020, more ballots were mailed out than there were voters.

Lindell: More than 300K election watchers in place, 250 counties with paper ballots

Lindell said he told Trump he had an army in place to watch for election fraud.

"I told him: 'We are doing everything we can. I have over 300,000 people on the ground in all 50 states,’” he said.

“I've got my cause of America, the election crime around all these things I run and have across the country, and we're making great, great progress on everything,” he said.

“We have over 250 counties committed to paper ballots and counting,” he said. 

“We’re fighting everything on every level to get back as much as we can on this playing field secure,” he said.

In August, Lindell hosted his "Election Crime Bureau Summit" in Springfield, Missouri, for the second year in a row, and he said he is not quitting his mission to bring Americans clean elections.

Mike Lindell predicts that his 48-hour ‘Elections Crimes Summit’ in August will be the most watched show in world history. pic.twitter.com/SeqKNyIYmF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 9, 2023

Lindell: MyPillow deplatformed despite its successful products

“January 7 and 8 of 2021, 1.2 million Americans were deplatformed: churches, people that had podcasts, deplatformed, if you said anything about the election or Donald Trump, and that was the day they tried to take away our voice forever,” he said. 

It really is not about the 2020 election, he said. “It is because we want to get rid of the electronic voting machines and secure our elections with paper ballots and counter—that’s what it's all about.”

He said that the MyPillow products were popular and gave retailers high margins, making it more painful to have them taken out of the big box stores over politics.

“The attacks on MyPillow--unprecedented in the history of the world--you take a product that was in every box store in this country, the shopping channels, their No. 1 selling product of all time,” he said.

“When I talk about a $60 buy-through at Walmart, their No. 1—that’s of all products, so for them to cancel MyPillow and these attacks, they turned up the heat last August,” he said.

"They're willing to forego money and profit for a bigger cause, so obviously, there's a lot more money behind that if you take down the United States,” he said.

“We were the No. 1 print ad in the United States and every newspaper in this country, and now they’ve won,” Lindell said.

“My company has been debanked by American Express, all the box stores except for maybe a few—and yeah, they've tried to take away everything you could imagine,” he said. 

“They blocked us from advertising--I mean, it's been a fight that's been of epic proportions, and we're coming through it--I believe that's because of our business model,” he said.

“MyPillow is an anomaly in history,” Lindell said. “We track every one of our sales directly, whether it's a commercial or you see it in an ad; they're all tracked individually and either need to break even or make money.”

Lindell said that despite the struggles he encounters as he travels the country, he stays positive because of his Christian faith and the goodwill of the Americans he meets along the way.

“People are pouring into this bucket of common sense from both parties,” he said.

“The people I'm talking to are pouring into this and got a revival going on with Jesus Christ because people don't reach out to God when things are going good.”