Mike Lindell claims Fox News canceled MyPillow ads

Fox News spokesperson: “As soon as [MyPillow’s] account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Updated

MyPillow was previously a leading advertiser on the Fox News Channel. According to a Media Matters analysis, MyPillow’s most recent ad appears to have run in December 2023 based on preliminary 2024 data.

Update: Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez reports that A Fox News spokesperson said of the dispute: "“As soon as [MyPillow’s] account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising.”

From the January 12, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room 

MIKE LINDELL (GUEST): Well, I got very disturbing news and it’s, I’m bringing it to your show for this announcement — 

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Oh great, I’m glad – I’m glad you’re bringing disturbing news, it’s been such a sunshiney show this morning. Hit me, brother. Let’s get it all — come on, come on. We’ve got big shoulders here in the War Room. We can take it, what do you got?

LINDELL: Well, as you know, Steve, ever since I was speaking out about our election platforms since January of ‘21, they’ve been attacking my company, MyPillow, with cancel culture, the box stores, the shopping channels, and now, Fox News. Fox News has canceled MyPillow, and I don’t have the reasons why yet, I can only, you know, say well, the caucuses are coming on Monday, they know my brand is branded right with our great real president, Donald Trump, you know, maybe it’s because I brought Lou Dobbs over to my Lindell TV network this week and – but, everything is just, very alarming and suspicious. Why now? Just out of the blue, you’re canceled, and Steve, it’s, I just – I’m beside myself. I don’t even know what to say. It’s like, you go after a company when – because your CEO is concerned about helping save our country and secure our election platforms. It’s just, it’s disturbing. It’s disgusting. 

BANNON: Hold it. Explain to the audience, what do you mean you’ve canceled by Fox? You give them $100 million a year, at least in the filings, to buy advertising. They’re not taking your money?

LINDELL: Hundreds of millions dollars. 

BANNON: Hundreds of millions dollars. Hundreds of millions.

LINDELL: Our new commercial, we’re launching – you guys might have seen them over on Newsmax and stuff this last week, and my media buyers, they gave me, they actually told me Wednesday night, and I’ve been sitting there, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom – why would you do this to us? And it’s full cancelation. I mean, you’re off. They won’t even accept–

[CROSSTALK]

BANNON: Hold on. Stop. Hang on. You give them hundreds of millions of dollars for those shitty – I mean those commercials I love. You give them hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re telling you now, that Mike, even though the commercials are entertaining, you can give us hundreds of millions of dollars, but the answer is no. You can’t buy time – I didn’t think you could do that in America. Can you even do that? I know the Murdochs are foreigners, but can you even do that? Can you not accept peoples’ commercials?

LINDELL: Yeah, I don’t know, look at what the box stores did to MyPillow and the shopping networks, and now one of our biggest platforms, for them to do that, here’s cash, can I buy the commercial. Steve, it’s not like it’s not their number one product in history or their number one commercial in history. And like I say, I can only say, is it because we added Lou Dobbs this week? Maybe it is because the War Room posse gets better specials, I don’t know.

BANNON: No, here’s what it is, they don’t want to platform you in the run-up to – they’re all in for Nikki Haley, they don’t want it around Iowa, New Hampshire particularly, they can’t have Mike Lindell on there. Mike, have you given, over the course of the history of MyPillow, the 10 years, have you given Fox basically a billion dollars, you think, in aggregate, of advertising sales?

LINDELL: I wouldn’t know the number, but I know it’s in the hundreds and hundreds of millions.

I would say it's somewhere maybe between a half a billion and $1 billion. Yeah. We were I think we're the number one direct sell advertiser of all time. We've been with them since November of 2014, partnered with them and, and realized, you know, people that I advertise with – we advertised everywhere, you know, CNN, MSNBC, Fox. You know, we've been doing that every platform ABC, NBC, CBS, everywhere.

And if you remember, at one of the – after the cyber symposium, Fox is the only one that wouldn’t let me advertise that. And so, you know, I don’t know if – I can only say it’s political, I don’t know for sure, but I know one thing, for not to accept money to advertise, I don’t know if that’s even legal. That’s what we’re looking into. I mean this is, let’s just go destroy MyPillow, I’m very disturbed about this.