Stop the crucifixion of Mike Lindell

OPINION:

The crucifixion of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell by “woke” corporatists represents a new and dangerous form of uncivil warfare that threatens to further divide our nation even as it desecrates the First Amendment.

Before “wokeism,” Mr. Lindell was praised across the ideological divide. He overcame drug and gambling addictions to create a powerhouse U.S. company employing thousands of Americans.

If every American CEO had the same “made in the USA” ethic as Mr. Lindell, I may never have served in the Trump White House. There simply would have not been any jobs and factories for then-President Donald Trump bring home to America.

In these “woke” times, however, Mr. Lindell has been under constant attack. “Wokeism” seeks to bankrupt any business that does not conform to the rigid doctrines of the left, and his original “woke” sin has been to openly question the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Never mind there is abundant evidence of possible fraud and election irregularities in the 2020 race — particularly in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where President Biden won the race. (For details, read the “Navarro Report,” which I penned in the White House after reading thousands of affidavits, reviewing the tactics of Democratic strategists like Marc Elias, and watching enough video clips to give me “JFK stole it from Nixon” chills.)

Just how is “wokefare” being waged against Mike Lindell? It started shortly after Mr. Biden took office when America’s big-box and bedding retailers began choking off MyPillow’s retail distribution channels.

More than 20 companies, including Costco, Dollar General, Kohl’s, Target and Walmart, stopped selling MyPillow products, despite their popularity and profitably. The hypocrisy of these “woke” corporatists is stunning.

To wit: In “woke” circles, it’s ethical to put an American company like MyPillow out of business if its CEO exercises his First Amendment rights. Yet it’s equally ethical for these retailers to stuff their distribution channels with Chinese products made with slave labor in highly polluted factories that benefit from the massive theft of American intellectual property and massive illegal government subsidies.

It didn’t take long for the next “woke” jackboot to drop. It would come from Mr. Lindell’s bank, Minnesota Bank & Trust. Despite years of Mike’s loyalty, this bank unilaterally closed all of his accounts, including the one for Frank Speech, Lindell’s TV network and First Amendment megaphone.

Comes now that paragon of “woke” virtue, American Express, in for the kill. After a profitable 15-year relationship with MyPillow, American Express has suddenly cut Mr. Lindell’s credit line from $1 million to a mere $100,000, thereby crippling his ability to manage his cash flow. On top of this, Mr. Biden’s IRS is terrorizing MyPillow with audits.

Mr. Lindell is hardly an outlier in this. He is just the most public victim of the unrelenting “wokeism” now fragging patriots all over Mr. Trump’s America.

Consider my own experience: After four years of White House service creating jobs and saving lives, the chancellor at the University of California, Irvine, where I’m professor emeritus, canceled my online course offering on the leading Coursera platform.

My loss of income due to this was small compared with the loss of opportunity for students worldwide who could never afford an elite institution like the University of California. Over 1 million students in more than 140 countries had already taken one of my courses.

Then there was my longtime speakers bureau, the Sweeney Agency. It declined to represent me after I left the White House, as did leading Washington speakers bureaus. Their rationale: With the “taint” of Donald Trump, I was no longer marketable to a client list heavily skewed toward “woke” corporations.

Nor could I sign one of those million-dollar book deals with a Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins — leading “woke” publishers that regularly hand out massive advances to any ex-Trump official willing to dump on Mr. Trump. While I would have several bestsellers with alternative publishers, I was again “wokefared” not once but twice by the editors of The New York Times Bestseller list. They refused to put either “In Trump Time” or “Taking Back Trump’s America” on the list — with a resulting massive loss in sales.

Of course, my lost “wokefare” income pales in comparison with what the “woke” corporatists are taking from Mr. Lindell. The broader question is, how can Americans who still believe in the First Amendment strike back?

Certainly, we can boycott. There’s not a snowball’s chance in Hades I will ever walk into a Walmart or use an American Express card again, or buy a book published by Simon & Schuster. And whenever I need towels, sheets, pillows or sleepers, I’m skipping Target and Kohl’s and heading to www.mypillow.com.

Yet what we really need is a reformed legal system that will empower victims of “wokeism” to hold both corporations and corporate executives financially accountable for their attacks and resultant damages. I, for one, will work hard to bring about such change if Republicans manage to seize both the White House and Congress in the 2024 election. Will you join me in that effort?

• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar, chief China strategist, and Defense Production Act policy coordinator. This column originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.