Former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, who despite “only” having a PhD dares to proudly display the honorific “Dr.” before his name, filled in for Newsmax host Greg Kelly Monday night. But while he spent much of the hour pushing conspiracy-fueled lies about the 2020 election, he at one point shut down MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for apparently taking things too far.
“We’re not going to ignore it here,” Gorka said at the top of the segment about supposedly fraudulent ballots. “Because we fight for the truth, and we believe that this is still the greatest nation on God’s earth, and nobody gets to steal it from us.”
Gorka introduced his guest as “the man who makes my show, for example, America First on Salem radio, possible, the great Mike Lindell,” alluding to the fact that MyPillow has become the primary advertiser on so much conservative media content, including Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. And on top of that, Lindell has been funding the president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
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“Well, I believe in this president,” Lindell said. “And I’ll tell you what. Nobody realizes something, what a miracle we had on election night at 11:15. You know, you talked about all this fraud, Dr., the biggest fraud is the Dominion machines.”
At that point, Gorka cut his guest off, saying, “Mike, Mike, we’re not going to get into the minutiae of the details,” before steering him to talk more broadly about why he’s supporting Trump’s legal challenges.
That comment may have seemed innocuous enough to viewers, but it was significant given the ongoing legal threats against Newsmax and other conservative networks from Dominion and Smartmatic, two voting machine companies that have been the target of the most outlandish election conspiracy theories over the past few weeks.
Earlier in the day, two separate Newsmax anchors were forced to read a statement about those claims, stressing that they were presented as “opinion” as opposed to fact.
“Since Election Day various guests, attorneys, and elected officials have appeared on Newsmax and offered opinions and claims about Smartmatic and Dominion systems. Both companies that offer voting software in the U.S.,” they told viewers. “And Newsmax would like to clarify its news coverage and note that it has not reported as true certain claims made about these companies.”
After Lindell ranted for another couple of minutes about how the election was “stolen” from the president, Gorka told him, “You nailed it, Mike, you nailed it. This is the biggest political crime ever that we have to stop it,” Gorka continued. “And without people like you, it would be impossible. God bless you.”
