Thread by @deenafaywinter

I recently read MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell's book as part of research for a story. It's called "What are the Odds?" and let me tell you, that is an appropriate title, because throughout the book you'll be asking yourself that very question. (a thread; 1/?)

I recently got an angry voicemail from Lindell, with a suggestion that I read the book, in which he said he's “very open about my past.” Indeed, it chronicles his life growing up in the Chaska area, with all kinds of warts most politicians try to hide.

It was his stoned, drunk, gambling, drinking-and-driving stomping grounds for decades. (He’s not a politician yet, but he’s considering becoming one.) I’ve interviewed several times in the past few years, but didn’t know much about his back story.

His foolish, booze- and drug-fueled antics get increasingly hard to believe. He starts out jumping out the window of a school bus and during the depths of his crack addiction says his drug dealers essentially staged an intervention after he’d been awake for 14 days straight.

All along the way, he says he planned to write a book one day — even one of his drug dealers reminded him of that as he tried to get sober — and kept keepsakes like a threat from a bookie scrawled on a Hardees bag in 1981. It’s literally pictured in the book. Who saves that?

After high school, Lindell wrote he started betting money he didn’t have with bookies who were “maybe not mafia, but definitely organized crime.” By age 20, Lindell wrote he was $12,000 in the hole when bookies came to collect one night. He hid in a closet.

Soon after, he mortgaged his trailer and paid the debt by handing off a bag of cash to a stranger in Southdale Mall. Two years later, after a bad weekend of NFL bets, he owed “the mob” $25,000 — more than he made in a year.

After they threatened his family, he drank a case of beer and headed south on Highway 169 to St. Peter, entered a gas station, took checks from the cash register & fled the station, throwing the checks in the air and nearly broadsiding a cop car.

Police records of the incident have been destroyed, but Lindell says the gas station theft and high-speed chase “made the news all over southern Minnesota.” Lindell was charged with DUI, felony theft and fleeing police, and plea bargained five years of probation.

and five work-release weekends in the Scott County Jail.
It was a light sentence, but Lindell said for years after, he carried a heavy burden of shame for it.

That claim can be documented, but many of his others would be tough to verify. Here’s a sampling of other stories he told in the book — it’s up to you, the reader, to decide “What are the odds?” it happened:

He and a friend climbed to the top of the Flying Cloud drive-in theater screen and hung from the top, mooning the crowd watching a Cheech & Chong movie. He struggled to climb back up and dangled there, butt naked, until his shorts fell off and his friend pulled him up.

In 1983, he took a break from counting cards in Vegas and played the slots at the Flamingo until a family came by and asked if their son, Tommy Bananas (yes, Tommy Bananas) could have a pull as they were celebrating a birthday. He let him & Mr. Bananas won a $1.5 million jackpot

At the suggestion of his *12-year-old son* that he try counting cards again to make $, Lindell headed out the next morning to a Kansas City riverboat casino, lost all his money, got lost driving, hit a pothole, knocked his pickup camper top off, was approached by two guys...

with a gun who ended up helping get his topper back on, and got stopped by a cop who said he’d stumbled upon the worst area of town, a place even the cops didn’t go.

He took blackjack expert Vas Spanos’s course to learn to count cards, and did it many times to get out of debt, including a 40-day binge in 1983 in Vegas.

To celebrate the sale of his beloved Victoria, Minn., bar Schmitty’s, he threw $2,000 in dollar bills into the ceiling fan even though “I was losing the bar. Losing my house. I was broke.”

After having a 2004 dream where he ran around yelling “Where’s my pillow?” he woke up repeating the phrase, then got up and began sketching MyPillow logos, and told his daughter he was going to invent a pillow that would “change the world.”

He declared bankruptcy in 2007 to avoid losing assets in a lawsuit against his bar. He called it a “fake bankruptcy.” You can read all about this in my story yesterday: minnesotareformer.com/2021/02/23/tha…

*Oops he didn't declare in 2007, he declared in 2004, it was finalized in 2007. Carrying on...

As he did lines of coke one night, 4 strangers called to say they saw him on a public access TV channel re-run and God told them to call and tell him not to give up, that he was important to God, that he would have a big platform some day.

And then a FIFTH robotic voice left a voicemail saying “Mike, this is a message from God. Everything you’ve experienced in your life will give you the strength to get through the next month.”

After he was awake for 14 straight days, strung out on crack, 3 of his dealers staged an intervention and refused to sell him more drugs. One took a photo of him and said, “You’ve been telling us for years that this pillow thing is some kind of ‘platform,’ and that you’re gonna

come back here and help us get out of this drug life. Well, we’re not gonna let you die on us. You’re going to bed. You ain’t got no choice.” Again, these were his drug dealers.

He met a Kentucky man in Memphis who had spent all his money on crack and couldn’t get home, and after a series of adventures buying drugs together, Lindell gave him several hundred dollars to get home. Then years later Lindell met a stranger in a Minneapolis bar who told him

the man named Tony “got clean and now he owns a bunch of chicken restaurants. He said you saved his life. He calls you ‘the angel from the north.’ ”

His sister had a 2009 dream about a woman in a teal dress who was Lindell’s perfect match. Then she met that very woman at a 2011 Christian conference in TX. God told him she was “the one” and Lindell began dating the Texas woman, Kendra Reeves, in 2014. The two still date.

Sleeping in separate hotel rooms when they travel, he wrote. At that time, anyway.

He dreamt about meeting Trump in an office, then later saw a photo of Trump in the same office and minutes later got a texted invitation to meet the president in Trump Tower. He later was photographed with Trump in the very room he’d dreamt about.

As @jpcoolican (OK this is mostly Patrick's voice) & I wrote last month, "The turbulence of the past few months are a microcosm of Lindell’s life story, as recounted in his memoir, as well as court documents and interviews. He’s won and lost fortunes gambling...

started multiple businesses that went bust, declared bankruptcy, spent years strung out on cocaine, crack and booze and hit the big one with a foam-filled pillow he invented in his garage. Like many salesmen, including his hero Trump, Lindell is best at selling himself.

Through the memoir and countless media appearances, he’s created a rich mythology." But one thing he didn't write about in the book are allegations of domestic violence by an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend, which we wrote about here: minnesotareformer.com/2021/01/22/mik…

Lindell claims God has talked to him all his life, guiding his path to redemption. With vendors fleeing & a $1.3 billion lawsuit now hanging over him, Lindell may need divine assistance, again. minnesotareformer.com/briefs/mypillo…