Mike Lindell went on a livestreaming marathon to celebrate the launch of his social-media platform.- I watched 8 hours of Lindell's streaming bender, Frankathon, which kicked off at 9 a.m. CT Monday.
- Lindell was still going strong on the livestream some 18 hours later.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has launched his social-media platform, Frank, after being banned from Twitter in January for spreading conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
To celebrate, he launched a 48-hour livestream that he's calling the Frankathon.
Lindell is a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump and has parroted Trump's voter fraud claims. He doubled down on his false theory about the 2020 election in a new lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems filed Monday.
Technical issues prevented users from signing up and creating accounts. Lindell attributed these server errors to a "massive attack," posting on Parler that the site would be up soon. New users were still not able to log on or create accounts at the time of this article's publishing.
The livestream began at 9 a.m. CT. I tuned in on the dot, and watched eights hours of it on and off throughout the day. Here are some of the highlights.
Lindell gets punk'd by a prank caller posing as Trump
Some five hours into the livestream, a call came in, claiming to have "Mr. Trump on standby."
"We have the real president here, our real president," Lindell said. "Hello, Mr. President!"
-Vic Berger IV (@VicBergerIV) April 19, 2021
The caller launched into a string of expletives as Lindell struggled to end the call. Twitter user James Winder, who runs a comedy podcast, later took credit for the prank call.
-Macron (@JamesWinder) April 19, 2021
Lindell announces the screening of a new documentary, "Absolute Interference"
Around 12 hours into the stream, Lindell announced that he would be launching his two-hour documentary, "Absolute Interference," during the second day of the Frankathon.
Lindell said that people, regardless of their political affiliation, would be shocked at the contents of this documentary.
"This is going to change our world forever, everybody. This is proof and evidence that China was attacking our country, and you're gonna know that this election was flipped," Lindell said. "This is bad."
Lindell's claims that a Chinese cyberattack "flipped" the 2020 elections and that Dominion voting machines broke at midnight on election night have been debunked. Dominion filed a $1.3 billion defamation suit against Lindell in February for perpetuating voter-fraud conspiracy theories.
-PatriotTakes (@patriottakes) April 20, 2021
Mike Lindell rages against Jimmy Kimmel
At around 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday, Lindell started ranting about late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Lindell rebuked Kimmel for poking fun at him, his new social media platform, and his newly launched e-commerce platform MyStore on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" last Tuesday.
"You're a former crack addict who somehow made millions of dollars selling pillows. Sell pillows. Why isn't that enough?" Kimmel said during his show's monologue last week.
"He said I was on drugs and crack cocaine and all that stuff," Lindell said on his livestream. He then accused Kimmel of being an addict himself. "He said I'm lucky I have all my teeth. Maybe you're an addict too, Jimmy," he said.
There is no evidence that Kimmel is an addict or recovering addict. Lindell has not been shy about his past addiction to crack cocaine. In response to Lindell's segment on Frankathon, Kimmel aired snippets of Lindell's rant during his Monday night monologue.
'Bad people' and 'threats'
At one point in the livestream, Lindell started telling his viewers that he was facing "threats" to his life, with "bad people coming for him."
"All these bad people, they got my phone number, we don't have free speech," Lindell said. "They hacked my phone, because they couldn't break Frank, they couldn't break me!" It is unclear what Lindell was referring to by these "threats."
From there, he segued into talking about how supermarket chain Costco "canceled" him.
"They loved MyPillow but jumped on the bandwagon of cancel culture," Lindell said. "Shame on you, Costco!"
He mentioned receiving death threats again halfway through his Costco tirade. It is unclear if Lindell meant to imply that he was receiving death threats from Costco.
The show goes on
Lindell said on several occasions during the stream that he would advocate for "freedom of speech" by hosting livestreams "every day or every week."
"I'll sleep for a couple hours later," Lindell said at 3 a.m. "And it'll be quality sleep, on my MyPillow!"
He is expected to carry on livestreaming for at least another 24 hours, with a continuous slate of guests calling in to speak to him.