Edited by: TJVNews.com
One of Fox News’ most visible advertisers, Mike Lindell and his MyPillow line of products, has pulled commercials from the network over a refusal to air an ad promoting claims of election fraud.
Fox confirmed the moves on Friday, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Lindell’s face is well-known to Fox viewers. He told the Journal he spent $50 million last year advertising on Fox.
Lindell has publicly promoted former President Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in which he lost to President Joe Biden. “It’s unfortunate Mr. Lindell has chosen to pause his commercial time on Fox News given the level of success he’s experienced in building his brand through advertising on the number one cable news network,” Fox said in a statement.
“I am pulling all my ads of MyPillow on Fox indefinitely and immediately. Shame on Fox,” Lindell said Thursday during an appearance on his own livestream network, according to a Vanity Fair report. His exit isn’t due to anything controversial Tucker Carlson said, but rather what he claims Fox News won’t do.
Vanity Fair reported that the Lindell commercial that Fox News refused to air included an advertisement for an online symposium that will be held in August, during which Lindell’s election theories will be further promoted. In a statement to Salon, Lindell said that Fox News “denied the cyber-symposium ad, and they based it on ‘pending litigation.’”
Lindell has said the symposium will prove the 2020 election was stolen from Trump through manipulation of election machines, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
Lindell said that MyPillow spent almost $50 million on Fox News last year and so far this year has shelled out about $19 million for ad time on the network, as was reported by the WSJ.
The WSJ also reported that MyPillow is among Fox News’s major advertisers, alongside supplement company Balance of Nature and weight-loss products provider Nutrisystem, according to advertising analytics firm iSpot.tv.
Ads for MyPillow also appear several times every hour on the Newsmax channel which is owned by Trump friend and supporter Christopher Ruddy.
Lindell’s company has taken to placing ads on Fox News and Newsmax because he is being silenced by the liberal, anti-Trump media over his election claims. In the aftermath of the election, he said that a number of retailers were pressured in to making the decision not to sell his products because of his political views.
Some retailers have said that they dropped the products because of poor sales, not politics.
