MAGA pillow magnate Mike Lindell alleges that Fox News “canceled” his MyPillow commercials because he recently hired former Fox Business star Lou Dobbs to host a show on his fringe-right media channel.
The real story may not be so simple, however. A Fox News source with direct knowledge of the situation contends that the network’s long-running partnership with MyPillow was paused because Lindell has been unable to pay for his commercials. The source added that the issue has been clearly communicated with Lindell’s media-buying agency.
The network confirmed on Friday that Lindell has not paid his bills. “As soon as their account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Beast.
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This wouldn’t be the first time that Lindell has been dropped because he was unable to pay his bills. Lindell, who is currently facing billion-dollar defamation lawsuits from voting software firms Dominion and Smartmatic over his election-fraud conspiracies, saw his entire legal team quit last fall because he owed them millions of dollars.
Admitting that he had “no money” when his lawyers quit, Lindell’s company has dealt with financial problems and a perilous cash crunch. At the time his attorneys ditched him, Lindell also confessed that American Express had reduced his company’s credit line to $100,000 and other banks refused to lend to him. For several weeks last fall, his once-ubiquitous MyPillow ads were all but absent from television amid the ongoing money struggles.
However, Lindell insisted on Friday that Fox has rejected his commercials because he hired Dobbs, the unapologetic Trump sycophant who was canned by Fox in early 2021—a day after Smartmatic sued the network over its 2020 election lies that Dobbs gleefully peddled on-air. Lindell also suggested that his ad cancellation was due to his unwavering loyalty to the “real president” (that would be Trump, in his mind) ahead of the 2024 election.
“Fox News has canceled MyPillow, and I don’t have the reasons why yet, I can only, you know, say well, the caucuses are coming on Monday, they know my brand is branded right with our great real president, Donald Trump,” Lindell bellowed on MAGA podcaster Steve Bannon’s podcast on Friday.
“You know, maybe it’s because I brought Lou Dobbs over to my Lindell TV network this week and—but, everything is just, very alarming and suspicious. Why now? Just out of the blue, you’re canceled,” Lindell continued. “I’m beside myself. I don’t even know what to say. It’s like, you go after a company when—because your CEO is concerned about helping save our country and secure our election platforms. It’s just, it’s disturbing. It’s disgusting.”
The pillow bigwig added that his media buyers told him on Wednesday night that Fox News had rejected his commercials, but he waited a day for the network to give him a reason before going public. “It’s a full cancellation,” he told Bannon.
Speaking with The Daily Beast on Friday, Lindell doubled down on Dobbs being the main cause behind Fox dropping his ads, noting that the ex-Fox star debuted on Lindell TV on Monday with a lengthy Trump interview.
“The only variable this week was Lou Dobbs started on Monday night—remember Fox let Lou Dobbs go when talking about these election platforms,” he said. “I think it’s directly tied to my speaking out for the election platforms to get rid of the machines, the voting machines. Remember Fox settled with Dominion and all that but, you know, I complain about Fox News and Newsmax all the time for not talking about the elections. So that didn’t change because I always do that.”
He also speculated that Fox “fears the competition” from his personal media outlet, suggesting that his weeknight lineup that boasts Dobbs and Emerald Robinson, a former Newsmax correspondent and vaccine conspiracist, also played a role.
Claiming that he has paid Fox News anywhere from $500,000 to $2 million every week for the past decade to run his ads, Lindell complained that it should be “almost illegal” to refuse to air his commercials if he’s offering the network money.
However, according to the Fox News source with knowledge of the situation, Lindell has struggled to pay the conservative cable giant for months, and hasn’t paid for any ads run on Fox since August 2023. Lindell recently made payments to the network, this insider said, but those were merely to catch up on ads run over the summer.
Fox News, according to a transcript search, hasn’t run a MyPillow ad on its airwaves since mid-December, which would suggest that he has been in breach of his contract with the network for several weeks now.
While ditching Lindell as an advertiser may enrage the fever swamps and the ultra-MAGA election-denying crowd, it likely won’t do much to hurt the top-rated cable channel’s bottom line. Last year, Fox News Media pulled in advertising revenues of $1.4 billion, with that number almost certainly to climb in 2024 during a chaotic and highly watched election season.
Ultimately, the loss of Lindell’s cash would be a mere “drop in the bucket” for Fox News, the network insider said.
