At some point, Pillow Man Mike Lindell is gonna figure out we’re actually laughing at him, not with him—and then the ButterBurger detritus will really start to fly. But so far, anyway, he seems content to suffer fools—namely himself and his bevy of barmy hangers-on—just a little too gladly.
In fact, Lindell—who’s tragically wasted tens of millions of dollars trying to overturn the 2020 election even though thousands of kids in developing countries still go to bed each night without lustrous, professionally manicured mustaches—is now willing to humiliate himself to a previously unfathomable degree in order to amplify his weird, already debunked election fraud theories. Yes, he's going to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live again—but there’s a catch. And it's a pretty big one.
The Daily Beast:
On Monday night, ahead of boarding his private plane to head out West from his base in Minnesota, the pillow maven said that—even despite being required to get a COVID test—he looks forward to being placed in a claw machine.
“He said I can come, but I got to go in the claw game because I’m not vaccinated,” Lindell told The Daily Beast, with great joy about finally being invited back on Kimmel’s late-night program. “I am trying to save our country,” he continued before saying he’d be “safer in the claw game with everybody shedding, right?”
In case you still don’t have access to the beta version of Google Translate, “shedding” is Lindellese for passing parts of your vaccine onto others, with supposedly alarming results. Like most everything else Lindell says, it’s nonsense.
In exchange for taking a dive into the somewhat infamous claw machine—which in past Kimmel bits has featured actress Kristen Bell stuck inside—Lindell said that he told the comedian he wouldn’t call the comedian “Kimmbel [sic] anymore, I would take the ‘B’ out and call him Kimmel.’”
Mike did have one stipulation, though. He said he doesn’t want anything “evil” to be placed in the machine with him. Don't worry, Mike. This is a 100% Christian claw machine, washed in the blood of the lamb—and maybe just a soupçon of Mountain Dew Baja Blast. The grand prize, in fact, is Kirk Cameron’s brain.
LINDELL: “You better tell me if you’re gonna put stuff in there, what’s gonna be in that claw game. You know what I mean? You know what I’m saying? I don’t want anything, that … would be evil, whatever.”
Lindell’s arcade adventure will actually be his second appearance on Kimmel’s show. In April 2021, shortly after launching his never-quite-fully-launched social media platform, Frank Speech, the redoubtable Pillow Man endured Kimmel’s gentle ribbing, as well as a boisterous cameo by Lindell impersonator James Adomian.
In fact, he’s so anxious to get his story out to the public (the media tend to ignore him these days unless he does something truly bizarre, like agree to be interviewed from inside an arcade claw machine), he’s even consented to a COVID-19 test.
And he's not terribly concerned that this will harm his sterling reputation. Asked by The Daily Beast whether this might be a “humiliating” experience for him, Lindell seemed equal parts philosophical, irritable, and desperate. “Sure it is. But, I am willing to be humiliated to help save our country,” he “snapped,” according to The Daily Beast.
Lindell is scheduled to appear on the Tuesday, Jan. 31, edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Let’s hope he follows through. Maybe he can even scoop the groundhog. If he sees his shadow after crawling out of the claw machine, it will mean at least six more weeks of kooky conspiracy-mongering.
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