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  4. Mike Lindell's latest hire for his Frank Speech broadcast channel is a former Newsmax host who once claimed vaccines contain satanic trackers

Mike Lindell's latest hire for his Frank Speech broadcast channel is a former Newsmax host who once claimed vaccines contain satanic trackers

Cheryl Teh   

Mike Lindell's latest hire for his Frank Speech broadcast channel is a former Newsmax host who once claimed vaccines contain satanic trackers
International2 min read
  • Mike Lindell hired a former Newsmax personality to join his online channel, Frank Speech.
  • Newsmax took Emerald Robinson off the air in November after she spread COVID-19 misinformation.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is staffing his broadcast platform Frank Speech, and his latest hire is a former Newsmax personality taken off the air over coronavirus misinformation.

Lindell told Insider on Monday evening that his Frank Speech platform had hired Newsmax's former White House correspondent Emerald Robinson and that she would start working with him Thursday. Frank Speech is Lindell's website and streaming platform from which he broadcasts his daily shows — and where he hosted his 96-hour "Thanks-a-Thon" livestream.

"She is producing her own show for Lindell TV at Frank Speech," Lindell told Insider. "I am very excited to have her coming to Frank Speech!"

"Fox News is ruining our country," he added. "Their hosts are all told what they can and cannot report! Frank Speech is freedom of speech!"

The conservative news channel Newsmax took Robinson off the air in November after she tweeted a bizarre claim about COVID-19 vaccines. She had written: "Dear Christians: The vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends."

The tweet echoed a far-right fringe conspiracy theory claiming that COVID-19 vaccines contain satanic trackers. Vaccine opponents have exploited the satanic-sounding name "luciferase" to spread fear about vaccines. Luciferase is a light-emitting enzyme found naturally in fireflies, according to Brenner's Encyclopedia of Genetics. Though the enzyme is used in medical research, it is not incorporated in the makeup of any coronavirus vaccine authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.

When it first distanced itself from Robinson in November, Newsmax put out a statement saying, "Such false claims have never been reported on Newsmax." The station then took Robinson off the air, saying it was "reviewing" her tweets.

Robinson is now set to join other personalities on the Lindell-funded online channel including the conservative vloggers Diamond and Silk, who were sacked from Fox News, and Brannon Howse, the founder of the conservative production company Worldview Weekend who cohosts Lindell's "Lindell Report."

Robinson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Frank Speech might, however, be hitting a snag in its programming. Lindell this week said two banks were dropping him after his phone records were subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. He told Insider that he had "millions" deposited in the banks and that one of the accounts a bank had requested him to close was linked to Frank Speech.

Lindell separately told Insider this month that he was spending about a million dollars a month to keep channels like Frank Speech going, adding that he wasn't opposed to borrowing money to keep the platform alive. The pillow executive said in December that he had already spent $25 million pushing former President Donald Trump's election-fraud claims and would "sell everything" for the cause if necessary.

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