Mike Lindell

Running for Governor in Minnesota

Downloadable Report Card

Supported Trump's Tariffs as Minnesotans Paid the Price
Supported Devastating Cuts to Health Care
Cheered On Taking Food from Minnesota Families
Promoted DOGE While Minnesotans Lost Jobs and Benefits
Has Extreme Anti-Abortion Views
Has Been Found Liable Again and Again for His Election Lies
Promoted a Dangerous Fake COVID Cure He Stood to Profit From
Can't Manage His Own Money — or Pay His Own Bills
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Supported Trump's Tariffs as Minnesotans Paid the Price

Trump's tariffs hit Minnesota's farmers, refineries, and Iron Range. Mike Lindell says he is "very pro-tariff."

Lindell's own page promoted a LindellTV interview with Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro under the banner "The tariffs are permanent because the problem is permanent" — captioned that Trump "is bringing back respect to America on the world stage."
The tariff rollout sent the Dow down more than 2,200 points in a single day, wiping out more than $6 trillion in market value in two days. In Minnesota, gas prices rose 5% and the state's two oil refineries and Iron Range ore industry braced for higher costs, since Canada supplies most of the crude Minnesota refines.
China booked no orders at all for Minnesota's soybean harvest, sending farmers to Washington to plead for a federal bailout. "It's a pretty dire situation," said the president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. Soybeans are Minnesota's single biggest agricultural export.
As a candidate for governor, Lindell declared "I'm very pro-tariff," insisting "it works…in the long term it's gonna work great."

Mike Lindell backed the tariffs that raised Minnesotans' costs and cost Minnesota farmers their biggest customer. We deserve better.

Supported Devastating Cuts to Health Care

Every Minnesotan deserves access to quality, affordable health care. Mike Lindell's media company worked to take it away.

In July 2025, Lindell's media company LindellTV celebrated House passage of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," calling it "historic legislation" that delivers "the largest middle-class tax cut in American history." The Washington Post reported the bill would cost at least 17 million Americans their health coverage. District-level estimates by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee put Minnesota's own losses at about 128,000 people losing insurance by 2034 — about 102,000 of them Medicaid enrollees.
The Congressional Budget Office found the bill would add so much to the national debt that it could force nearly $500 billion in Medicare cuts beginning in 2026.
LindellTV campaigns against the Affordable Care Act. In December 2025 it promoted a video of its own reporter confronting Rep. Sarah McBride over what the network billed as a "shocking OBAMACARE revelation" about fraudulent enrollments. More than 151,000 Minnesotans were enrolled in ACA marketplace plans in 2025.

Mike Lindell supported stripping health care from hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans. We deserve better.

Cheered On Taking Food from Minnesota Families

About 232,000 Minnesota households rely on SNAP benefits. Mike Lindell's media company cheered on the biggest cut to the program in its history.

In July 2025, LindellTV celebrated House passage of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," which cut federal SNAP funding by $186 billion through 2034 — about 20 percent, the largest cut to SNAP in history.
As of April 2026, 232,216 Minnesota households were receiving SNAP, according to USDA's own data.
LindellTV has repeatedly promoted the administration's SNAP crackdown — cheering a USDA move to "block illegal aliens from food stamp benefits" through stricter proof-of-identity rules, and headlining its interview with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins "186,000 Dead on SNAP."

Mike Lindell supported making food more expensive for Minnesota families. We deserve better.

Promoted DOGE While Minnesotans Lost Jobs and Benefits

Minnesota has about 20,000 federal civilian workers and 1.15 million Social Security recipients. Mike Lindell's network cheered DOGE on as it cut into both.

LindellTV celebrated the House locking in DOGE's $9 billion package of cuts: "USAID – DEFUNDED. NPR – DEFUNDED. PBS – DEFUNDED. No more taxpayer dollars flowing to bloated bureaucracies or politicized media."
DOGE's edict to fire all probationary federal employees hit Minnesota, where about 20,000 federal civilians work.
DOGE's dismantling of AmeriCorps affected some 14,000 volunteers and members in Minnesota serving 2,100 locations — schools, food banks, homeless shelters, health clinics, and veterans' facilities. It also cancelled nearly $4 million meant to rehabilitate affordable apartments, and terminated leases at 11 Minnesota properties, including a USDA office that inspects the state's food animals.
1,152,818 Minnesotans collect Social Security. After DOGE cuts cost the agency 10% of its workforce, the average wait for a field-office appointment reached 34 days — and the agency stopped publishing its call wait times and processing times altogether.
Lindell's own campaign platform pledges to go after "wasteful spending at the State, County, City and School District levels," while separately promising to cut income and business taxes and drop the sales tax on in-person purchases to 5%.

Mike Lindell promoted DOGE as Social Security lines grew and Minnesota workers lost their jobs. We deserve better.

Has Extreme Anti-Abortion Views

Minnesota law protects the right to abortion. Mike Lindell said he would "absolutely" try to change that.

The Minnesota Legislature passed the Protect Reproductive Options Act and Gov. Tim Walz signed it in January 2023, codifying a "fundamental right" to abortion and reproductive care in state law over Republican objections.
Launching his campaign, Lindell said he would "absolutely" try to change Minnesota's abortion laws as governor. Asked whether that meant banning the procedure altogether, he said, "I don't know, I'm not there yet on that" — then added: "Would I like to? Yeah, absolutely. 100%."
In 2019, Lindell part-financed "Unplanned," a Christian anti-abortion film that an OB-GYN said gave "an inaccurate and fearmongering depiction" of abortion. Its co-director told the New York Times he hoped the film would trigger "the cultural moment that overturns Roe v. Wade."

Mike Lindell threatened the reproductive freedoms of Minnesotans. We deserve better.

Has Been Found Liable Again and Again for His Election Lies

Mike Lindell is America's most prominent 2020 election conspiracy theorist — and a jury and a federal judge have both found his false claims about voting machines defamatory.

Lindell helped sponsor the "March for Trump" bus tour run by Women for America First — the group that went on to organize the January 6 rally — and spoke at five of its stops. He told Reuters his funding ended in mid-December and that he did not finance the January 6 rally itself, but he attended it — and afterward blamed the Capitol attack on leftist infiltrators: "It was all a setup." He added: "I'm never letting the fraud go. It was the most corrupt election in U.S. history, and probably in world history."
A month later he released a film built on false claims about the election.
A Denver jury found Lindell defamed Eric Coomer — a former Dominion executive he had called a traitor and a criminal, and who received death threats afterward — and awarded Coomer $2.3 million in damages. Separately, a federal judge in Minnesota ruled that Lindell defamed Smartmatic with false claims about its voting machines; damages are still to be set at trial. Dominion's own $1.3 billion suit ended in a confidential settlement in June 2026, and Lindell estimated that fight alone cost him about $20 million.
Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could prove the "election data" he was peddling was not from the 2020 election. A software expert did exactly that — and when Lindell refused to pay, a federal judge in Minneapolis ordered him to pay the $5 million within 30 days.
And the man who made "election integrity" his life's mission? In July 2026 — two days after Trump endorsed him for governor — the Star Tribune reported that Lindell was not registered to vote in Minnesota. He held an active registration in Texas, where he said he voted in 2024, and told the paper he didn't know whether he was registered in the state he wants to govern.
He registered four days later — then blamed the state for it, claiming Minnesota's automatic voter registration should have signed him up. The Secretary of State's office stood by its records. State officials note that getting a driver's license only registers you to vote if you show proof of citizenship, a distinction the candidate promising to overhaul Minnesota's elections appeared not to know.

Mike Lindell spread election lies that a jury and a federal judge found defamatory. We deserve better.

Promoted a Dangerous Fake COVID Cure He Stood to Profit From

Mike Lindell promoted a deadly plant poison as a COVID-19 cure — one he personally stood to profit from.

In 2020, Lindell pitched oleandrin to Trump and the White House coronavirus task force as a COVID-19 treatment. Oleandrin comes from the oleander plant, which is highly toxic and can be fatal if consumed — scientists writing in The Conversation called it a "deadly plant poison, not a COVID-19 cure."
The only study its maker had published was a non-peer-reviewed pre-print on monkey cells in a lab, with two of its authors holding a financial stake in the company — nowhere near the clinical trials the FDA requires. Lindell told a TV host he was taking it himself and giving it to friends and family.
Lindell sat on the board of directors of Phoenix Biotechnology, the company manufacturing the extract — standing to profit if it won approval. Pressed on air about the science, he was asked to produce the testing he claimed existed and replied, "I don't have the test."

Mike Lindell promoted a dangerous fake cure he stood to profit from. We deserve better.

Can't Manage His Own Money — or Pay His Own Bills

Mike Lindell is asking Minnesotans to hand him the state's finances. Here is how he has handled his own.

Lindell has spent years fighting the IRS over a $6 million tax debt. The agency put a $6 million lien on his Texas house and garnished half his MyPillow paycheck — wages he estimated in a sworn deposition at $20,000 to $30,000 a week. "I have no assets," he said under oath in 2024. "There's nothing left." In 2025 he told a federal judge, "I'm in ruins."
The tax hole came straight out of the oleandrin scheme. Lindell said in his depositions that he "put in $10 million" buying the supplement after a man told him he had received a message from God about a "cure for the virus." The FDA never approved it, so the stockpile sat in a Lakeville warehouse until it expired — and the IRS refused to let him write off the loss when he wanted to.
Meanwhile his creditors line up in court. MyPillow faces more than $25 million in claims for unpaid bills — a $15.4 million judgment to the slipper supplier it stopped paying, an $8.8 million judgment to FedEx with Lindell personally on the hook for $2.7 million, and at least six more judgments in 18 months. Most were default judgments, meaning MyPillow never even answered the lawsuits.
FedEx accused him outright of fraud — of stringing them along about money that never existed. "A continuing theme in Lindell's communications with FedEx was that funds were available, on the way, and that FedEx would receive payment at any moment," the company told the court. He said a stock offering would cover it; it flopped and he never saw a dollar. He said loans would cover it; they never came. He said he would pay from a "high-end stock option opportunity" involving shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX. "This too never happened," FedEx said.
A company tied to Lindell owes at least $30,000 in delinquent property taxes on his Tonka Bay home. He told the Minnesota Reformer he could not afford to pay them last year and would pay that week; weeks later, county officials said he still had not. His own party noticed: Minnesota Republican Party Chair Alex Plechash said Lindell wants Republicans "to overlook his serious financial baggage, public records showing tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent property taxes, significant electability concerns and unanswered questions surrounding his running mate."
None of this snuck up on him. MyPillow's own president warned him in 2016 that mixing the business with his politics would wreck it. "It was the beginning of the downfall of MyPillow," Jim Furlong testified. Lindell's answer, according to Furlong: "Mike said he was going to do it, and if we didn't like it, that was just too bad." Employees owned much of the company. Legions of them were laid off.

Mike Lindell can't pay his taxes, his shippers, or his suppliers. He wants to run Minnesota's budget. We deserve better.

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