My Weekend in Hell with Mike Lindell

By Jacob Gries, August 22, 2022

Mike Lindell is, above all else, an amazing salesman. Whether it be pillows, coffee, tickets to a sparsely attended two-day conference, or crackpot theories and ideas, he’s incredibly adept at convincing people that they need whatever it is he’s selling. So it’s not all that surprising that he managed to convince hundreds of people to join him inside the Springfield Expo Center in Missouri for his Moment of Truth Summit this past weekend, where he repeatedly and tirelessly yelled about “the machines,” “the truth,” and “what we’re up against.” With his leftover time, he ceaselessly thanked God and promised to pray for all the non-believers. The whole thing felt like a church service with a sentient conspiracy theory subreddit in place of a liturgy, blended together with about a pound of caffeine, which made for a truly insane spectacle.

Same Old Songs, and Singers

Lindell kicked off the proceedings on Saturday morning by strolling out onto an empty stage to Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” The song choice, while hilarious, was appropriate – against all logic, common sense, and proof, the pillow salesman is still standing behind his assertion that the 2020 election was fraudulent and stolen because of, once again, “the machines.” Like those who read the constitution through an originalist lens, Lindell wants to travel back in time, to the days when every voting ballot was cast on parchment paper and tabulated by hand. Technological advancement and evolution are his strawmen, and he claims he’s not going to stop until we remove machines from our lives entirely.

Lucky for us, in lieu of machines, we have people. And Lindell, as you already know, only deals with the absolute best people, a hallowed club that includes, among others, Kurt Olsen, Jenna Ellis, Dr. Douglas Katz, Colonel Conrad Reynolds, and Jovan Pulitzer – a who’s who of D-level celebrity election-deniers who took turns spewing absurdist rhetoric and encouraging the crowd to stand up and cheer for Mike, their hero and savior.

Behold the “Evidence”

One after another, speakers took the stage to present their “evidence,” which usually involved zeroing in on anodyne, semi-irrelevant pieces of information that they used to square-peg-round-hole their arguments and theories. Take Antrim County, for example, a teeny, tiny county in Northwest Michigan that’s home to a whopping 23,000 people, or .00007 percent of the U.S. population. When trying to mount a credible, believable election fraud argument, one would think that starting with something that, in the grand scheme of things, is relatively inconsequential would be a bad idea.

And yet, that’s exactly what Lindell and Patrick Colbeck, a former Michigan state senator did – they deemed that supposed fraud in this small patch of the state was both credible and noteworthy enough to lead off the entire summit. Unfortunately for Lindell, this theory, like many others that originate in his brain and somehow, someway make it out of his mouth, is neither credible nor noteworthy.

The many unrecognizable and largely unknown faces that graced the stage was a testament to how out there many ofthese ideas have become, even within the Republican party. Sean Hannity was nowhere to be found, and neither was Tucker Carlson; there were no Trumps in attendance, as far as I know; and Jesse Waters and Laura Ingraham were also notably absent. Yes, both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon were in attendance, but both of them already dwell on the fringe of the fringe of the GOP.

A Marathon of Liars  

About four hours into Saturday’s proceedings, I was reduced to a half-awake high school sophomore trudging through a boring history class in the middle of February, and it wasn’t even the subject matter!  (I knew what I was getting myself into in that respect.) Rather, whenever Lindell took the stage, he relentlessly repeated the same four-or-so talking points. And when he left the stage, he sent up less enthusiastic messengers, which ground the entire event down to a boring, hard-to-watch crawl.

After his opening remarks on the first day, he paraded up speakers from every single state, all of whom presented fantastical, disproven data points to bolster the lie that they’ve all been cultivating for close to two years now. And this carried on for more than eight hours. (I legitimately cannot imagine sitting through even one hour of this in person.)

Like any multi-season sitcom, you don’t really need to watch the full run of the show to get the gist. The best sitcoms, though, always have endearing characters that keep viewers coming back for more, which can’t be said for this multi-year reality show. So here’s a game: The next time you see Mike Lindell flash across your screen, count how many seconds it takes before he launches into a diatribe about either the machines or his faith, and from there, turn it off and do something else with your time.

Jacob Gries is a writer living in Manhattan who’s written pieces on sports, politics, technology, art, and other things in between. Find him on Twitter at @imjacobgries .

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