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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
MisInfoNation Part 2: Patriots, Pillows and Paper Ballots. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired August 24, 2024 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:43]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
Since his defeat in 2020, former president Donald Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the election was stolen. The results somehow rigged by Democrats. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, but that hasn't stopped Mr. Trump and his allies from relentlessly pushing these lies. Now, many of those same allies are gathering again ready to claim fraud if the former president is once again defeated in November.
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan spent the past few months with some of Trump's biggest promoters who continue to spread doubts about the security of the election and are doing whatever they can to ensure Trump wins. He begins with the most famous pillow salesman in America.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: How are you? My name is Donie O'Sullivan.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Tony.
O'SULLIVAN: Donie.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joni O'Sullivan?
O'SULLIVAN: No. Not Joni like Joni Mitchell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tony?
O'SULLIVAN: Donie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donie?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you an Irish boy?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God bless you. So am I.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): As a journalist, I spend most of my time traveling across the country, talking to people. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My name is go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) yourself.
O'SULLIVAN: And are you from Ohio?
(Voice-over): About who they are.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I committed to dress like a crusader, maybe five, six years ago.
O'SULLIVAN: And how they see the world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you tell me you're going to release the kraken, show me the freaking kraken, for crying out loud.
O'SULLIVAN: JFK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senior.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senior.
O'SULLIVAN: As Jesus reincarnated.
(Voice-over): All about trying to keep an open mind.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Biden has never been inside the White House. They are at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta.
O'SULLIVAN: As conspiracy theories hurt regular people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will get through this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's caused me to lose my son.
O'SULLIVAN: And lies leads to violence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bring in live rounds right now and shooting people.
O'SULLIVAN: I think we better beyond this police line.
(Voice-over): In this land of misinformation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the hell out of my face.
O'SULLIVAN: I'm waiting for the MyPillow guy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's happening now. Other things happening now. The great replacement theory, you all know that name, right? They want to replace American citizens who love the country with people who have no love for the country.
MIKE LINDELL, MYPILLOW CEO: MyPillow sandals, $25, and for the first time ever, last time ever --
O'SULLIVAN: The last time I saw Mike in person was about three years ago at his cyber symposium in South Dakota, where he said he was going to prove the 2020 election was stolen. LINDELL: There's hacks and cyberattacks every day.
O'SULLIVAN: He didn't.
LINDELL: So I don't need your people to go out and doctor the evidence and put out a Mike Lindell is a conspiracy theorist.
O'SULLIVAN: Well, you haven't -- somehow three years later he's still doing what he's doing. I'm still doing what I'm doing. Neither of us are the better for us. I bet you this as same as this. This seems like Mike's convoy.
LINDELL: Hey, there's my buddy.
O'SULLIVAN: Mike.
LINDELL: What's going on?
O'SULLIVAN: How are you doing? It's been a long time.
LINDELL: What's going on? How are you doing?
O'SULLIVAN: Welcome to Las Vegas. Have you just landed?
LINDELL: Did you ever read my book? You know, I lived here for a while, lot of bad things.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): We come to Las Vegas to meet the country's most famous pillow salesman.
LINDELL: Are you going to pay attention this time?
O'SULLIVAN: I'll try. I'll try.
(Voice-over): And one of the country's biggest election deniers.
Mike was in town for a couple of MAGA events. The election was still seven months away but here it was all about getting Trump back into the White House.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, my husband has this one.
O'SULLIVAN: It felt like half tent revival.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because we're just talking to God right now.
O'SULLIVAN: Sure. Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Father God, I just thank you for Donie.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Half Trump rally.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where's all the media that's snaking around here? You can come right up here.
O'SULLIVAN: Where it seems like everyone was selling something. Movies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to shamelessly plug by movie. Number one on Amazon of all DVDs. That's all on Amazon.
O'SULLIVAN: And miracles.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Balances the brain, keeps the hemispheres.
O'SULLIVAN: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You allow the cells to detox and come back into harmony with the body.
[21:05:05]
O'SULLIVAN: I feel like I'm being abducted by aliens or something.
(Voice-over): But Mike was here to sell more than pillows. He was on a crusade to save American democracy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's Thursday, April, the year of our Lord, 2024.
AUDIENCE: Trump! Trump! Trump!
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE STRATEGIST: With me the great Mike Lindell up here. And no, we're not going to start with an infomercial on lumpy pillows or free shipping.
O'SULLIVAN: We go here.
LINDELL: I think last time you interviewed me I lost my voice. Remember that?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes. Back in 2021.
LINDELL: Yes.
O'SULLIVAN: Mike, it's three years on.
LINDELL: Right.
O'SULLIVAN: You're still doing this?
LINDELL: Yes. Got to save our country, huh?
O'SULLIVAN: There's a lot of people in this for cynical reasons, right? To make money, to get famous. You strike me as somebody who truly, truly believes the 2020 elections.
LINDELL: You can't see I'm a grifter when I'm $40 million in, and they keep attacking my company and I'm decimated.
My battle is to get the machines and get to paper ballots component. It's not about a conspiracy of overturning the 2020 election. O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But Mike did try to overturn the 2020
election. Something he doesn't like pointed out.
LINDELL: You would want it to be the best in the world when this isn't about the 2020 election, when they're going to show --
O'SULLIVAN: But what am I going to learn here tonight?
LINDELL: You're going to learn that the computers that are used in our election have God keys, description keys in there. They have the pass code inside them and they're on the internet, and they're using software that was illegal and that's what the Supreme Court will see themselves.
Now, don't you think the judge should at least open up and say, hey, you guys, we've got a big problem here? And it's connected to where? China.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): It's hard to follow what Mike actually believes, but ultimately he's convinced wrongly that the 2020 election was stolen through hacked voting machines, and now he wants to get rid of them.
LINDELL: Tomorrow is the big day. If they pull that in, it'll be 9-0. They will vote it.
O'SULLIVAN: We've met Mike a day before the Supreme Court was huge to consider a case he had funded against election officials in Arizona in an effort to get rid of voting machines there.
LINDELL: Are we going live on free speech?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
LINDELL: Yes. We're going to let you, guys, film us being live on free speech.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): After Mike, another Trump supporters were kicked off social media platforms following January 6th for spreading election conspiracy theories.
LINDELL: We're having a social media platform. It's like a YouTube- Twitter combination.
O'SULLIVAN: Mike set up his own social media and video streaming platform, FrankSpeech.
LINDELL: This thing over here at FrankSpeech and Lindell TV has done two things. One is gave us a platform to reach out to all of you with MyPillow products, and then also to keep our voice going.
O'SULLIVAN: It's got its own slate of TV shows.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our guest is Ben Brook, who's been on here many times. We love Ben.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, Wayne. It's great to be back with you.
RUDY GIULIANI, AMERICA'S MAYOR: Good evening. This is Rudy Giuliani with "The Rudy Giuliani Show."
LINDELL: I want to tell you, when we all started winning, and that was on January 7th and January 8th of 2021. A real president lost his Twitter, remember that? And so everybody that had even spoke out about the election are questioned. They were de-platformed. But since that day are voice kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The cause of America, my own network FrankSpeech. I said, I got to reach the public.
God bless you. Thank you. God bless you.
O'SULLIVAN: But Mike wasn't the only one here with an election conspiracy theory.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The election was stolen in six battleground states. Those six states were decided by the votes of illegal aliens who came in through our open border.
O'SULLIVAN: These false beliefs about the last election are being used as a pretext to cause chaos and confusion about the next election. And they've spread far beyond this room in Vegas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Freedom! Freedom!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is not a fight between Democrats versus Republicans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on, come on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a fight against good and evil.
O'SULLIVAN: Do you think there'll be a fair election?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they're going to try and cheat.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our voting system was always a concern.
O'SULLIVAN: Are you concerned if Trump loses --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
O'SULLIVAN: -- that there'll be another January 6th?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. I think there will be civil war.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:12:03]
O'SULLIVAN: We come to the southern border in California to meet a religious group called Take Our Border Back.
KIM YEATER, TAKE OUR BORDER BACK: Come on. Come on. So are you live streamers? This is it, this is what it's going to take action. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. We've got to take action. Close the border.
O'SULLIVAN: One of its leaders is Kim Yeater.
YEATER: We're at war and it is a spiritual war against principalities of darkness.
Come on, we're appealing to heaven. Mexico, that's right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're rolling down to the border to get the message through.
YEATER: Freedom! Amen, amen. Amen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Alleluia.
YEATER: Alleluia. Father God, we come before you, God, in the name of Jesus. Father, we come before you. We love you. We praise you. We speak out to Mexico right now. We speak out to the ends of the earth right now. We pray for victory over Satan. Victory over the enemy. Let's break bread in Jesus' name.
Come on. So good.
O'SULLIVAN: How are you doing? I'm Donie.
YEATER: Good. Tony, great seeing you.
O'SULLIVAN: Donie. Yes.
(Voice-over): Kim is a life coach.
YEATER: Donie, are you a human doing or a human being?
O'SULLIVAN: And now an online influencer.
YEATER: Do you see my bling?
So, Mike, I've been censored in cattle.
LINDELL: Well, I'm going to go like this. No way.
O'SULLIVAN: You really got politically involved in 2020?
YEATER: That's a great question, Donie. So I got to tell you, I am not into politics at all nor do I have an interest in politics. I'm into truth. So I can't say I got politically involved. I got truth involved.
This is the Take Our Border Back North America Alliance.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): The group's name maybe "Take Our Border Back."
YEATER: Border, border, border. We're here because of the border. O'SULLIVAN: But the topics here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we're dealing with today is an evil oligarchy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's we, the people, versus the deep state.
O'SULLIVAN: Range from fighting communism.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He told my mom, honey, they're coming for me. My mom said, what, who? The communist. Communism is here. They're not practicing it. They're enforcing it here.
O'SULLIVAN: To fifth generation warfare.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifth generation warfare is basically anything that's non-kinetic. V2K, voice to skull technology.
O'SULLIVAN: And of course elections.
YEATER: Does the ballot box matter? Does your voice being heard matter?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We all know what happened. Joe Biden didn't win.
O'SULLIVAN: Many of the people at this event believe American elections are in some way corrupt. Like Noel.
NOEL, INFLUENCER, PATRIOT MOM 007: Regardless of the problems of the election, the process, the machines, our government, you know, keeping us in our boxes and not being able to congregate together.
[21:15:06]
O'SULLIVAN: What would you describe yourself as? An activist? Influencer? Are you an influencer?
NOEL: They say influencer, I don't know like how true that rings.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Online she's known as Patriot Mom 007.
NOEL: There are some things in place for the illegals voting and being able to register in really sneaky ways.
O'SULLIVAN: This idea that undocumented immigrants who are coming into the country today will vote in November's election.
NOEL: Probably. No doubt.
O'SULLIVAN: When it comes in the presidential federal elections, do you think that's actually going to happen?
NOEL: I mean, I think the probability is better than not. I mean, if we're being realistic and honest about it.
O'SULLIVAN: But in a meaningful way?
NOEL: Do you not think it's possible that that's going to happen? Just knowing what you do and all the --
O'SULLIVAN: But they would need citizenship, though, right? To vote.
NOEL: Well, ideally, you -- well, ideally, yes. I mean, if you're following the law.
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
NOEL: But if you're already a group of people who don't follow the laws.
YEATER: That sent me into questioning, there's election fraud, period, period. There's so much evidence. You see in 2020 my vote was stolen. So that was the kind of great awakening for me to realize that my vote had been taken.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Kim says her interest in elections began when she claimed she went to vote in 2020 and was told someone already had voted using her identity.
YEATER: We didn't vote. We haven't voted at all. We hadn't mailed anything and nothing. And so that was the beginning of something is not right. How are they thinking that I voted? Who voted for me? We started taking our elections back.
O'SULLIVAN: But Kim was given a provisional ballot and was able to cast a vote.
You having the issue you had to vote in 2020, you don't necessarily know that that has anything to do with undocumented immigrants, right?
YEATER: So I personally do not know that. Now, if we're going to talk about the illegal immigrants coming in and having the ability to vote, that's a question that we all need to ask.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Undocumented immigrants are not allowed to vote in federal elections in the United States and multiple studies have shown it is extremely rare.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm concerned about the number of illegals that are in our country that are able to vote.
O'SULLIVAN: But it's a lie that's being pushed over and over and over again by MAGA influencers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't imagine how many illegals are registered to vote in a state like California.
TUCKER CARLSON, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: The U.S. code, as of right now, would allow illegal aliens to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR, DONALD TRUMP'S SON: We don't have to like worry about the reliable voting box. We'll just bring in 20 more million people and we'll give them Social Security.
O'SULLIVAN: Some in the MAGA world like Steve Bannon have huge followings.
YEATER: War in the border.
O'SULLIVAN: Others like Kim and Noel having much smaller audience but together they form part of a huge and sustained chorus of election denialism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Middle of nowhere, hot as hell.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vivek, how are you, my friend?
O'SULLIVAN: Many of them have been shut down on major social media platforms for sharing conspiracy theories.
ALEX JONES, INFOWARS: 95 percent of it is just the Rockefeller Foundation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even if he's in jail, he'll get elected president.
O'SULLIVAN: They're part of a new world of social media sites that promote themselves as free speech platforms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nick Apollo, Brian Calendar, the Hot Twins, Mr. Guns and Gear, and of course, Alex Jones.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sleep like a baby.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be sure to go to MyPillow.com.
O'SULLIVAN: And a lot of them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And MyPillow is the only pillow you can buy to fight tyranny and communism.
YEATER: Sell pillows.
LARA TRUMP, RNC CO-CHAIR: You can go to MyPillow.com and use promo code "Trump."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank God for MyPillow.com. Promo code "frontline."
YEATER: Tap into them MyPillow complete mattress sleep system. I absolutely love Mike.
O'SULLIVAN: You have a MyPillow promo code. It's Kim, right?
YEATER: It is Kim. MyPillow.com/Kim.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But what might have started with a problem at a polling location.
YEATER: The agenda is to depopulate.
O'SULLIVAN: Seems to have dragged Kim down a rabbit hole.
YEATER: Anything with the (INAUDIBLE) is absolutely sinister, period. Now we know that Soros is just another puppet, isn't he? This was set up and this was deliberate. We somehow are losing our sovereignty and our voice is being stolen. What's really happening is there's a global agenda. So there's a global agenda being pushed. We've got to follow the money.
O'SULLIVAN: Who's pushing the global agenda?
YEATER: You know, if I drop names right now the first and easiest thing for people to say is, oh, conspiracy. She mentioned George Soros. Oh, conspiracy.
O'SULLIVAN: Antisemitic.
YEATER: So anti -- yes, ridiculous. I love Jews, by the way. Can I say that? I love Middle Eastern people. I love Portuguese people.
[21:20:05]
I love people of every nationality, every color, every race. I just love people because we're all God's children, period.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Through my reporting I've met a lot of people like Kim. It's always tough to know just how much of what they are saying they really believe.
I know a lot of people on the left cynically will look at you and say, she has seen a niche here to become successful in this new information ecosystem because it could potentially be lucrative.
YEATER: Can I tell you a secret? This has not been lucrative in any way. This has cost me my time. It's cost me time with family. It's cost me time even in working my own business. This has been lucrative in no way.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But one thing was clear.
LINDELL: For all of you out there that buy products.
O'SULLIVAN: Mike Lindell and his pillows.
It's the MyPillow HQ.
(Voice-over): Were helping keep this world of an election denialism alive.
LINDELL: Don't trust me on a golf cart. I once drove one right into a pond.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:25:56]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What can I get started for you?
O'SULLIVAN: Could I get a small iced Americano?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Go ahead and (INAUDIBLE) for you at the window.
O'SULLIVAN: Thank you. We're going to see the MyPillow guy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: MyPillow guy?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That sounds like a lot of fun.
O'SULLIVAN: I know. Does he come by for coffee?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Probably all the time.
O'SULLIVAN: We'll just head on in. Hello. How are you? We're here to see Mike. Wow. Mike is thinking about how bad this interview could go, but just bought a gun on his desk so. Uh-oh. How are you?
LINDELL: Good. Good. How are you guys?
O'SULLIVAN: Good to see you.
LINDELL: Good to see you.
O'SULLIVAN: Just admiring your --
LINDELL: I don't usually work here. Here's (INAUDIBLE), everybody comes in.
O'SULLIVAN: No problem.
LINDELL: Got a couple of things we've got to do and then we'll be heading down there.
O'SULLIVAN: When we visited Mike the first item on his agenda was a call about a company that would help him navigate big tech's rules against misinformation, allowing him to promote his platform FrankSpeech.
LINDELL: The good thing is the number one thing is FrankSpeech platform because it all centers around that. If you -- if I have a voice, I can pretty much guide anything, you know, anywhere. But if I don't have my voice, which is why I made FrankSpeech in the first place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our goal is to get you on these platforms, getting views without getting taken down. And it's a constant, constant battle.
LINDELL: And you're making awareness for the platform FrankSpeech, correct?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's correct.
LINDELL: That's it. There you go. You're hired. OK.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Mike Lindell is an American success story. LINDELL: Fitting you with a MyPillow is very important so that you get
the right amount of fill for you as an individual.
O'SULLIVAN: He went from crack addict.
LINDELL: You know, that hologram, that picture there, is where the drug dealers did an intervention on me in 2008.
O'SULLIVAN: Your drug dealers --
LINDEL: They're doing an intervention.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): To CEO.
LINDEL: Hello. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. So when they stack these up and she's looking for any flaws, this is the first part of customer -- of making sure everything is perfect. There's Dick. He's in the book.
Dick, CNN is here. They want to interview you.
O'SULLIVAN: He's given jobs to people who've suffered from addiction like he did.
LINDELL: He was my kind of hope badge. He had been clean and sober for three years when he came to me the month before I quit everything. Here's my original invention. You see this thing with the round holes?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
LINDELL: I had to change that out three times to get the different sizes I need when I invented MyPillow. This is how I did my shows back in the days. So I would sit there. If you came to me.
O'SULLIVAN: But I sleep like this, snoring like.
LINDELL: Right. So you --
O'SULLIVAN: And get sore --
LINDELL: Right. Your arm gets sore. You don't need that with the MyPillow because this -- what's happening is your pillow is going, and your body wants to keep your neck straight.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's good to see you here.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): It's hard to imagine now.
LINDELL: It all seems like a lifetime ago that we met in August of 2016, right?
O'SULLIVAN: But until a few years ago, Mike had no interest in politics.
LINDELL: He invited me to Trump Tower and I walked out of his office about 40 minutes later. I said, I don't know what a president -- I had never voted before in my life. O'SULLIVAN: Really?
LINDEL: I had never been -- I didn't know, I was a crack guy. I didn't know a Republican from a Democrat, I didn't know what a filibuster from a millibar.
O'SULLIVAN: So you never voted before 2016?
LINDELL: No. My whole life I didn't think politics affected me at all. And one of the things that you've shown us all is that it affects almost everything in our lives, yes, politics do.
Normally if you've seen this --
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But his belief in election conspiracy theories and his insistence on pursuing them has almost cost him his business.
And the box stores and stuff kicked you out after January 2021?
LINDELL: January 9th when I got all the evidence.
O'SULLIVAN: But do you realize what you're doing when it comes to elections it risks all of this. Right? Like --
LINDELL: The world has risks all that, but I can't risk our country. I won't back down.
O'SULLIVAN: There's no room for you to say, you know what, just go back. Focus on Pillows.
LINDELL: Never. Never, never, never. I will never look back. I can't unsee what I've seen and I can't un-know what I know. If you guys know what I know, you've been saying, wow, now I get it.
[21:30:02]
O'SULLIVAN: I want to try and find out. I want to try to understand.
LINDELL: So this machine. I took it only one thing. Everything we've sent out has a bible verse in it.
O'SULLIVAN: Wait. So this is custom-made. You get a bible --
LINDELL: Custom-made. Yes, to put a bible verse in every single package that goes out of here.
O'SULLIVAN: What? Notice to become Christians become new persons. That's too --
LINDELL: Second Corinthians --
O'SULLIVAN: As Trump would say two Corinthians.
LINDELL: Yes, yes. Right. So what you see, see that willy-wonk (PH) and truck factory back there. O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
(Voice-over): I stepped into Mike Lindell's factory into his world.
What? Oh, my god. Those are robots.
LINDELL: These are -- what they do.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): But the more I spoke to him.
Do you have evidence it was stolen?
LINDELL: In 2020?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
LINDELL: Absolutely. Evidence we have is the cash vault records.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): The more it was clear when it came to elections that his was a world of pure imagination.
LINDELL: Look at that guy.
O'SULLIVAN: You seem to -- I think it's two different things, right? You can say there's issues with voting machines, et cetera. But you don't have to say -- go as far as saying that the 2020 election was stolen.
LINDELL: I have never -- for me, I haven't said -- you guys have been the ones saying that. I've said that in the beginning, yes, it was stolen. I know it was stolen. I have evidence it was stolen. We got to secure election platform and learn from that. I don't care if it was completely turned over or not. We've got a big problem here.
O'SULLIVAN: I understand. Yes.
LINDELL: Where computers are in our elections.
O'SULLIVAN: Did you have a good night?
(Voice-over): When we last saw Mike in Vegas.
LINDELL: That's what you're going to learn. That's what the Supreme Court will see themselves.
O'SULLIVAN: He was confident that a case he had help bring to the Supreme Court challenging the use of election machines in Arizona would be accepted by all nine Supreme Court justices.
LINDELL: And I'm telling you it's going to be a 9-0 vote going wild.
O'SULLIVAN: In the end, the court refused to even hear the case. But Mike wasn't fazed or at least he didn't act like he was.
LINDELL: Our victories everybody, these are our little victories, which are big victories. People see, oh, Mike, you Supreme Court got turned down. How do you feel? I feel great.
O'SULLIVAN: All right. So how are you doing now? Are you going on with Bannon?
LINDELL: Yes. Hey, Denver.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, sir, how are you today?
LINDELL: Not too bad. Not too bad. We'll do this. The giveaway, the flag, and the MyPillow 2.0.
O'SULLIVAN: You're doing a promo on Bannon, too.
LINDELL: This one -- yes. You know, we buy advertising all over, podcast everywhere.
O'SULLIVAN: How many shows like Bannon's are you on?
LINDELL: Like podcasts?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
LINDELL: Most of all them there's -- I don't know. I guess 100 to 200, but when we had this long before this election. So.
O'SULLIVAN: Any kind of pro-Trump MAGA media I see? I always see a MyPillow ad on there.
LINDELL: This country will be saved,
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
BANNON: Afternoon, Neil, formerly a Trump administration one. You're selling the best beef in the world. Where do people go?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You go to Merryweather --
LINDELL: She's doing beef right now.
BANNON: Mike Lindell, people's heads have been blown up about this deal. Talk to me, give me a deal before I go to the 6:00 hour.
LINDELL: All right. And now it seemed we had a great day with CNN. Remember they toured the factory, everybody. So we did, you guys get the free go anywhere MyPillow. And the MyPillow 2.0. Free with any purchase, as we know, we all need the best sleep of our lives during these attacks.
Steve, it's been quite a day with these CNN guys. I got 20 cameras on me right now.
BANNON: Is this Donie? Is this our friend from CNN, Donie, the Irishman?
LINDELL: He's right here. BANNON: Donie is an assassin. He comes across that little leprechaun
thing. He's an assassin. Watch out for him. He's a killer. Watch that guy.
LINDELL: Yes. OK.
BANNON: OK. Stick around. Mike Lindell, Donie from CNN. Boom. Stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:38:44]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to thank God for his big mercy on our nation. And thank God for protecting President Donald Trump yesterday.
O'SULLIVAN: Where were you when you heard the news last night?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was at home sitting on my couch, and I was devastated by what I saw. I couldn't believe my eyes. I mean, this is America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They almost just killed our president. They almost just murdered him.
O'SULLIVAN: We are at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump was almost just assassinated. It's the first attempted assassination of a U.S. president in the age of social media.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll put it this way. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some sort of inside job.
O'SULLIVAN: The bullets had barely been fired before there was conspiracy theories everywhere all over the internet on the right and on the left about what had happened or what hadn't really happened.
We're just at a vigil where Trump supporters were praying for the former president. Now we're on our way to an anti-Trump protest that's happening just outside the convention here.
[21:40:01]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am here to protest Trump in a swing state where it matters even more.
O'SULLIVAN: And is there a number one issue for you or?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, definitely women's rights, abortion laws.
O'SULLIVAN: How did you feel when you saw he almost got assassinated?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't feel too passionately in either direction. I think bad things happen to bad people.
O'SULLIVAN: How did you feel when you saw the assassination attempt?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you really want to know?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The first thing that ran through my head is because we cannot believe this man ever that it was somehow fate. No, that a man died. It's horrid. And I think it is a terrible comment on the country's state right now that any one would think anywhere that it's appropriate to shoot at any political candidate. But I couldn't help but wonder because we've been lied to over and over by this man.
O'SULLIVAN: I assume just as you've watched what Trump supporters say about the election or how January 6th, was Black Lives Matter an inside job? Now, you kind of sound like them. You're saying, well, maybe it was a staged assassination attempt.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. And that's I hate but that's what I'm doing. I hate that that's where I have gone. And I wonder why I've gone there and is it because I am constantly hearing them say these kind of things? I don't like that this is where we've gotten in this country because there has been this pervasive and it has come mainly from Trump and his supporters. This pervasive misinformation that has become a part of our country.
O'SULLIVAN: People like Mary don't really know what to believe in part because of how fractured our media environment has become, and that brings us here to Media Row.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been against political violence and I hate what happened to Trump.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Real Americas' Voice, Daily Signal, FrankSpeech. These are all media outlets that most Americans have never heard of but it's where hundreds of thousands, millions of people are getting more and more of their news, their information and misinformation.
BEN BERGQUAM, REAL AMERICA'S VOICE: We exist because you guys are doing such a poor job. Our network and I would say others are kind of filling the vacuum that the mainstream media, fake news media. We're leaving.
O'SULLIVAN: Don Junior from the Trump campaign realizes just how important this new media universe is, right? He is going from booth to booth here, doing interviews, because this is where the audience is. Would you agree?
LINDELL: Hey, I'm going to tell you something because you're right. You know what, let me tell you something.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): I had barely stepped foot in Media Row before running into Mike Lindell.
LINDELL: I mean, at these stations, people that got their voice taken away. They started podcasts. They started all these news things rose up. O'SULLIVAN: Mike was on his way to do another pillow promotion on the
Steve Bannon Show. But since we last met Mike, Bannon had gone to jail and his daughter had taken over hosting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mike, I know my dad who said in order to support him, support our sponsors.
LINDELL: I promise your dad, when he went in, this is our political prisoner special, exclusive to the "War Room." This is the most affordable mattress topper in history.
O'SULLIVAN: Trump's assassination attempt injected this year's RNC with a new sense of urgency. But not without a sense of humor.
RUSSELL BRAND, COMEDIAN: I've never been to anything like this. This is somewhere between a con hall and a trade fair. And I'm so confused.
O'SULLIVAN: What is Trump Poetry?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the greatest poetry book of all time written by the greatest poet of our generation. It is his tweets 2009 to 2019 as concrete poetry in the style of E. Cummings.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am a defender of Miley Cyrus, who I think is a good person, not because she stays at, let's say, my hotel, but last night's outfit must go.
O'SULLIVAN: Are you working here? You're buying.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm buying.
O'SULLIVAN: What are you buying?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm buying Lee Greenwood's bible. I want Trump to sign it and Lee Greenwood, $75.
O'SULLIVAN: Tree books.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 25. What do you think? Should I get it?
O'SULLIVAN: I think you should.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well.
O'SULLIVAN: What's Patriot Mobile?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are we?
O'SULLIVAN: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.
O'SULLIVAN: Patriots only? Patriot Mobile because you do not want to be with one of those liberal toll networks, all right?
(Voice-over): But it made the carnival atmosphere talk of a dark future.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think if it comes to November and all of a sudden we see the fraud happening and Trump doesn't pull off a win, I think it's going to start a riot.
O'SULLIVAN: And the familiar conspiracy theory that undocumented immigrants were going to steal the election in November also widespread here.
[21:45:04]
Do you think non-citizens voting is an issue?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no question it's a huge issue.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now only United States citizens should be voting in America.
O'SULLIVAN: But they're not going to get a ballot, though, will they? They won't be on a voter rolls.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They'll be able to go up to any clerk and ask to claim that they're a last-minute registrant and vote.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): The conspiracy theories spewed here in Media Row are the same being preached from the podium at the main stage of the RNC.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): Biden and Harris want illegals to vote now that they've opened up the border.
LAURIE CANTILLO, CHAIR, HUMANE BORDERS: I think what we're seeing now is that the border has become even more politicized than ever.
O'SULLIVAN: So many of these narratives emerge at the southern border so we went there to find the facts.
CANTILLO: I heard a quote recently that the real crisis at the border is that many Americans have lost their hearts. That they are dehumanizing people out here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:50:57]
CANTILLO: We have these flags, they're 30 feet high so that they can be seen for several miles. The blue is the universal symbol of water.
O'SULLIVAN: Humane Borders is a charity that gives water to migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.
You've been doing this more than 20 years?
CANTILLO: Humane Borders was founded in the year 2000. If you look statistically at who's coming in through the border, immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than U.S. born citizens.
O'SULLIVAN: The MAGA media universe once portrayed the border in one way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This, you're like, OK, what's the blue flag, guys? What's the blue flag? We've got water stations now. This is set up here before illegal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are military aged men like they're in their 20s, man, and they're not coming here with families.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are going to vote for Joe Biden? Yes, OK. They're all going to vote for Joe Biden. You did it, Joe.
CANTILLO: These are political opportunists who are coming to the border for a photo-op to try to convince people that this is a scary place.
O'SULLIVAN: As we travelled along the border, we suddenly came upon a group that had just crossed into the U.S. Mostly children and women, some pregnant, waiting in 100-degree heat.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK? It's OK.
DORA RODRIGUEZ, BOARD MEMBER, HUMANE BORDERS: They (INAUDIBLE) them to the side because they're going to get really pissed off.
O'SULLIVAN: Border Patrol eventually arrived.
RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking in foreign language)
O'SULLIVAN: This group would be taken in to be processed and within 24 hours, some of them could be sent back to Mexico. Further down the wall migrants sat in a makeshift camp waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol.
RODRIGUEZ: Hi, honey. How are you? So do you know what's going to happen when they come to pick you up? I need asylum. (Speaking in foreign language). OK?
O'SULLIVAN: Some here were the so-called military age men Trump world keeps talking about.
RODRIGUEZ: When the agent come, you say, we want asylum. You have a right to be here and ask for asylum.
O'SULLIVAN: Dora Rodriguez fled El Salvador and crossed the border into the United States in 1980.
RODRIGUEZ: I was just 19 years old. A kid that didn't know the world and then after five days wondering this desert in 115 degrees. 13 of my friends died, including three kids, 12, 14, and 16. Three sisters.
O'SULLIVAN: The sort of new talking point these people are coming into the country so they can be used to vote Democrats, so they can steal this next election. RODRIGUEZ: Right. Do you believe that? If you're in your right mind,
you will not believe that because that's not true. People have been coming to this country and have come for centuries. This is not new. People has come to this country because they trust this country. There is a lot of misinformation, but it's for one purpose. To create fear because fear sells.
We see our people here presenting with their children. You're not telling me that a 5-year old is coming to take your vote or to invade your cities.
O'SULLIVAN: Just like social media and the internet, you know, you can come here and find the story you want to find. And the narrative you want to push, right? If I were a guy who's streaming on Facebook and anti-immigrant, I show up here, this is what I see.
[21:55:13]
Like this is a camp, no sign of kids. Just all these young people, military-aged men. See how the narrative kind of can get shaped very easy with that. I think the people on the left are also wrong to say that it is only kids and women.
(Voice-over): After we left the border, we headed north to Phoenix in Maricopa County. In 2020, Maricopa became a hotbed of election conspiracy theories after Trump lost here. And it could happen all over again in 2024.
You are one of the top election officials here in Maricopa County. And your name is Bill Gates?
BILL GATES, MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA BOARD OF SUPERVISORS: It is. It is. It is true.
STEPHEN RICHER (R), MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA RECORDER: Nobody ever just says, you should trust electronics because you should just trust them. So this is an important step before the election to make sure that the tabulators are working as intended.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): We were in Maricopa as the county tested its machines that count votes. Representatives from both political parties were here to witness it for themselves.
RICHER: And then there are tests after the election as well to make sure that the tabulator stayed consistent and were reading ballots as they should.
O'SULLIVAN: Tests like these happen all over the country. But they seem to do little to quell conspiracy theories about voting machines.
LINDELL: I don't trust any election that was ever used with the computer ever. I want to get to paper ballots and hand count it.
GATES: Everyone votes on paper here. So this is part of these conspiracy theories that people are voting, you know, like touchscreen, like they're ordering a burger at McDonald's. It's on paper and the paper ballots go through the machines. That's how they're tabulated. But also keep in mind that we do several audits and one of them is a hand count, a percentage of those votes to make sure that the hand count is consistent with those machine counts.
O'SULLIVAN: Bill and Stephen are both Republicans. They've been battling election conspiracy theories for years, even when they're tweeted by Elon Musk.
RICHER: I don't know. I guess you just caught me at the moment where I said I wanted to say something about this. And so the allegation was that you don't have to be a citizen to be able to vote in Arizona. You must be a citizen. It is unlawful. It is a felony if you vote and you are not a citizen. Your immigration process will become much, much, much, much, much more challenging.
GATES: Look, there are issues at the border. I don't dispute that, but as it relates to voting it's not something that I'm concerned about. And this is unfortunately just another conspiracy theory that's now being thrown at the American people. So that those who maybe don't like where the final results end up will then point to that and say, well, that's why I didn't win.
LINDELL: That's my guy. I've been looking everywhere for you, CNN guys.
O'SULLIVAN: I spent a lot of time with Lindell recently. I will say we've had a lot of laughs together. He is an entertaining man. But what Mike Lindell is doing is dangerous, right?
GATES: I think anyone who is spreading misinformation about our election system, it's dangerous. Not only is it further rattling people's faith in the system, but in some instances, it leads to threats to our elections workers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happens if they steal the election in November?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I honestly think there might be a civil war in our country.
O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Through FrankSpeech --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The answer is people have to put this into their own hands.
O'SULLIVAN: Mike has helped create a dangerous myth that a Trump loss in November can only come about through cheating. And the world for a serial election deniers like Rudy Giuliani have their own show.
Since your question, because I've been thinking about this a lot, you're addicted to this?
LINDELL: No. No, I'm not addicted to this. You know what? I want every time, every place I go we have one shot to get rid of these electronic voting machines and get to paper ballots. I'm passionate about it because if you knew what I knew you wouldn't stop me either. O'SULLIVAN: I think you mean well, but I think what you're doing is
probably pretty dangerous.
LINDELL: OK. But I don't agree with that. Why is that dangerous that I want to have secure elections? Tell me that. Why -- how you come --
O'SULLIVAN: You're supporting, right, you have helped build the universe through FrankSpeech and Frank Social.
YEATER: In 2020 my vote was stolen.
O'SULLIVAN: A universe of influencers and media outlets spewing misinformation. Misinformation that could cause confusion and chaos this November. And it's the media outlets like these that are becoming increasingly influential, Trump loses they're going to Trump loses, they're going to be used to build up the narrative that the election was stolen. And if he wins, they're going to be used to push pro-Trump propaganda. There's going to be a lot more of this.
