MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell calls on Trump to 'impose martial law' in 7 US states, deletes tweet soon after
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most vocal supporters of President Donald Trump, on Saturday, December 19, called for the Republican leader to impose "martial law" in seven states. Lindell made the statement in a tweet, however, he later deleted it. Lindell, who is also a key financial contributor to the Trump campaign, echoed the president's criticism of Republican governors Doug Ducey in Arizona and Brian Kemp in Georgia, claiming they betrayed the party by refusing to overturn their state election results.
President Trump, who has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections, has continued to claim massive "voter fraud" in the polls. The Republican or his campaign, however, have not yet provided any evidence to back their claims. Lindell, in a series of tweets over the past months, even called for some voters in Georgia to "go to prison" because Trump lost the election. The pillow company CEO, in his recent controversial tweet, claimed that if Trump declares martial law in the seven states then his campaign allies could take control of the state's ballots and overturn the election results in Trump's favor. He tweeted: "Look @dougducey you made the list and your crooked buddy @BrianKempGA! @realDonaldTrump please impose martial law in these 7 states and get the machines/ballots!" Lindell, however, deleted the tweet an hour later.
It was not clear which seven states Lindell was referring to in his tweets, however, it appeared that his tweet was in response to attorney Lin Wood's calls for military and government-led crackdown in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. All of these states were won by Biden in the presidential elections on November 3.
"We have to get this governor ... Brian Kemp has to give an order to have a Congress meeting, whatever they do, their legislators, and pull Georgia down and don't give it to Biden," Lindell said at the Trump rally last month. "It doesn't matter who they give it to; don't give it to Biden and find out all your corruption. If you pull down Georgia, Pennsylvania and crooked Nevada, now nobody has 270 [electoral] votes, and on December 14 it goes to the [Electoral College] vote and Donald Trump wins the election!" he added.
The pillow company's CEO, who at a rally earlier this year had claimed that Trump was the "greatest president" in American history, had recently demanded that the Republican "put people in prison" over his election loss.
Some had hoped that President Trump's claims of voter fraud would quiet down after the official declaration of the election results by the Electoral College last week. However, the Republican has continued to insist that he won the polls. President Trump, on December 13, also refused to discuss whether he would attend Biden's inauguration in January and instead continued to insist that the Democrats "lost badly" in the 2020 presidential elections.
Trump, in an interview with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, was asked whether he would "show up at the inauguration," to which the president replied saying: "I don't want to talk about that." The Republican leader then claimed that he did not lose the election to Biden. "I want to talk about this: we've done a great job," he said. "I got more votes than any president in the history of our country. In the history of our country, right? Not even close—75 million far more than Obama, far more than anybody. And they say we lost an election. We didn't lose. If I got 10 million fewer votes, they say I couldn't have lost."