News dropped today that the MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, had advised President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and try to do some kind of soft coup within the government. Thanks to a Washington Post photographer, you can see in his notes that he was advising Trump to do these things.

this has got to be the dumbest coup attempt of all time. Seriously, the MyPillow guy, someone who makes tens of millions of dollars a year, has nothing better to do than to try to convince President Trump to use the military to stay in office? It’s unclear at this point if any sort of repercussions will happen to Lindell, but many are calling on Bed Bath & Beyond, his biggest retailer, to stop selling his products or face a boycott of their stores. As of this post, the store has not released a statement indicating that his Lindell’s products would be pulled from the shelves.

So, this whole story begs the question: what does Mike Lindell have to gain in this bizarre attempt to convince the President? He has hitched his name to the President for a few years now, but why? Does he hope to become yet another succesful conservative grifter, or does he genuinely believe in “conservative politics”? Trump obviously isn’t a traditional conservative, expanding government spending and entering into a trade war with another country.

Lindell started donating to political causes in 2016, according to OpenSecrets. He donated $16,100 to the RNC in September of 2016 and another $2,700 to the Trump campaign a month later. Since then, he has donated to various conservative Congresspeople and Senators, and has become a confidant of the President. With corporate America fleeing Trump, especially after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, one could speculate that Lindell sees a market opening up with a lack of compeitors: a strong corporate voice for the President and his movement, and one hell of a good way to sell pillows.