- Final 12 months, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell stated his firm would make and donate COVID-19 masks.
- Lindell instructed The Day by day Beast he misplaced $7 million on the hassle and has tens of millions of masks left over.
- “I can not give them away,” Lindell instructed The Day by day Beast. “Nobody desires the issues anymore.”
- See extra tales on Insider’s enterprise web page.
In a speech from the Rose Backyard final 12 months alongside then-President Donald Trump, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell stated his firm would produce and distribute face masks to do their half within the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, the conservative determine is saying the operation has value him tens of millions of {dollars} and that they’ve tens of millions of masks they cannot do away with. Lindell instructed The Day by day Beast this week that the mask-making effort value him and his firm a mixed complete of $7 million.
“I can not give them away,” Lindell instructed The Day by day Beast. “I attempted to. Nobody desires the issues anymore.”
An aide to Lindell instructed the outlet they’d 2 million masks they cannot do away with, whereas Lindell instructed they “ought to only burn” them.
Learn extra: The MyPillow man says God helped him beat a crack dependancy to construct a multimillion-dollar empire. Now his non secular devotion to Trump threatens to carry all of it crashing down.
Lindell, a loyal Trump supporter, introduced in March 2020 that MyPillow was changing 75% of its manufacturing, which relies within the US, to creating face masks.
He instructed FOX9 on the time that he didn’t plan to promote the masks, however as an alternative they might be going to Minnesota and different hospitals across the US. He additionally stated the corporate was making 100% cotton masks because of the availability of the fabric.
However Lindell instructed The Day by day Beast that regardless of his intent to donate masks to hospitals and nursing houses, the masks didn’t meet the requirements for healthcare staff set by the Meals and Drug Administration, which require masks to be a minimum of N-95-grade.
Lindell additionally stated his mask-making operation, which The Day by day Beast stated has teetered backwards and forwards from a charity effort to a enterprise enterprise, suffered from a saturated market.
Lindell has remained considered one of Trump’s staunchest defenders. He has continued to push unsubstantiated claims in regards to the election and has even stated the previous president could be reinstated later this 12 months, a weird principle that has no constitutional foundation.
Lindell instructed Insider’s Jacob Shamsian in February that he had already misplaced $65 million in income due to retailers boycotting his enterprise over his election fraud claims. He’s additionally being sued for $1.3 billion in a defamation case introduced on by Dominion Voting Techniques, an election expertise firm wrapped up in his fraud claims.