MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Changes Tune, “I’ll Run For Governor If God Will Have Me Do It”

But as Politico reports, President Trump has been nudging him to get in the game:

President Donald Trump introduced those tuning into his nightly coronavirus task force briefing on Monday to a special guest: Mike Lindell, the multimillionaire inventor and CEO of the MyPillow empire.

"Boy, do you sell those pillows," Trump said, asking him to step up to the mic and tell Americans how his company was helping them deal with the outbreak. Lindell then launched into a short infomercial for his company, going on to describe how the firm was manufacturing cotton face masks and effusively praising the president for his pandemic stewardship.

“I did not know he was going to do that, but he is a friend of mine, and I do appreciate it,” Trump said.

It’s hardly their first encounter. Lindell has told associates that the president is encouraging him to run for governor of Minnesota in 2022, to “keep Minnesota red beyond” the 2020 race, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments.

Trump told him that “he really wants me to run,” according to the source, who spoke with Lindell in late February soon after the MyPillow CEO’s conversation with Trump in the White House.

Lindell was in town for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference over that last weekend of February, and on Feb. 29, posted a photo on Instagram of himself with Trump at the White House, saying he had been appointed the chair of the Trump 2020 campaign in Minnesota. “We will make Minnesota great again!” he wrote in the caption.

Officials in the White House have also had internal conversations about Lindell’s political future, including a prospective run for governor. The fact that the MyPillow inventor is a “Trump Republican” makes the president’s team excited about his potential candidacy, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Lindell is “likable, has a great persona and great redemption story,” this person said. “It has been a tough state but there is excitement and folks are excited about the prospect that Minnesota is trending red.”

Lindell has teased a potential run for years, telling associates that Trump had wanted him to run in 2018, but apparently Lindell dropped the idea after it became clear that his company was on the brink of layoffs. MyPillow eventually laid off 150 workers in 2019.

Lindell, a lifelong Minnesota resident, would likely face off against the Democrat incumbent Tim Walz, who was elected in 2018. Walz currently has a 55 percent approval rating and a 25 percent disapproval rating, according to recent polling from the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis.

If Lindell ran and won, it wouldn't be the first time that Minnesota has elected a celebrity political outsider: Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura served as governor from 1999 to 2003 and comedian Al Franken won two terms as a U.S. senator from the state.

In a brief interview, Lindell denied that Trump has encouraged him to run. “I’ve never talked to Donald Trump about it. I rarely have a conversation with him, maybe once in a blue moon.” A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Though he claimed he was “100 percent committed” to a run in 2022, one person who spoke to him added that he may have just been boasting. “Mike is a very braggadocios guy in the same vein as Trump, where he’ll say, ‘I’m going to do X-Y-Z’ and then just totally forgets about it, or totally decides that it’s not in his best interests anymore and so just lets it disappear,” this person added.

Lindell pushed back on this notion and said: “When I say I do something, I’m like the president: I follow through and do it. I keep my promises.”

The flirtation, however, has started to become more public.

In recent months, Lindell published an autobiography and told local media outlets during interviews that he’s open to the possibility of running in 2022. “You know, people keep asking me, so yeah, I’ll consider it and I’ll pray about it and see if God leads me on a path,” he said during a January appearance on The Paul & Jordana Show on News Talk 830 WCCO. As he recently told the Star-Tribune, he appointed his son Darren as the company’s chief operating officer, “[i]n case we do anything political.”

A Minnesota GOP operative noted that Lindell attended the winter meeting of the Republican Governors Association, where people encouraged him to run, according to another Republican familiar with the conversations. (Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell brought him to the event, according to this person and McDonnell, in an interview.)

Remember his wonderful speech with Trump?

And now?

In recent interview, Lindell shocked everyone when he said he would be open to it "if God would have me do it".

Wow, what a response!

Watch him here:

Our friends over at the Western Journal had more on the story:

In an interview with Newsmax TV, MyPillow founder and Minnesota resident Mike Lindell condemned his state’s handling of the death of George Floyd — as well as the riots in the aftermath — and said he may consider a run at the governor’s mansion in the North Star State.

In the interview on “Saturday Report,” Lindell said that Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer whose actions may have led to the death of Floyd, should have immediately been arrested and held in custody after the incident.

“It’s sad, because I think our leadership could have been a lot more prepared,” Lindell said

“Prepare on a big scale, better to have too many [National Guardsmen] than too few,” he said.

Lindell, a lifelong resident of Minnesota, said he was disappointed in the state’s elected leaders.

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“It comes down to we’ve had some very poor leadership from the mayor [of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey] to the AG [Attorney General Keith Ellison] to the governor [Tim Walz], the list goes on.”

So, would Lindell consider a run at statewide office?

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“If God has me do it, I will do it,” Lindell said.

“I just see things that are so poorly run, and they could be done a lot better. It might get down to, ‘if you want something done right, do it yourself.'”

Lindell also said that Chauvin, the police officer at the center of the controversy, should have been held under a Minnesota law that allows a suspect to be kept in custody for 48 hours without being charged.

“[T]here are bad people in all walks of life, including police,” Lindell said.

So, Mike Lindell for governor? Why not?

After all, Lindell has become a political figure whether he wants to be or not, considering the fact that the businessman has been close to President Donald Trump and appeared at White House events.