Turns out Jordan Klepper’s visit to Mike Lindell’s MAGA rally was as bats*it as the MyPillow guy himself made it look. The Daily Show correspondent was among the several who turned out to his MAGA rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, and he managed to snag an interview with Lindell and many of the Trump supporters who still believe a long list of lies Trump’s litany of sycophants tout about the election and Trump’s apparent coming reinstatement to the presidency later this summer.
Lindell tried to turn the tables on The Daily Show by posting video of the interview before it aired on Comedy Central, but perhaps he didn’t come off as well in that reveal as he’d hoped. Which is why the actual segment airing on Thursday night was a topic of interest, to say the least.
Klepper’s ‘Fingers The Pulse’ segment heavily featured Lindell on Thursday, but started with several who attended the rally and parroted the usual misinformation about the election, Democrats and how Lindell is a real American who tells it like it is. But when he actually talked to Klepper, well, things didn’t go so well.
“I already have the evidence,” Lindell claimed, without evidence before he went into a speil about what the rally really is for. “Do you know what this is doing? Do you guys get it?”
The actual purpose of the rally is not for Trump, Lindell claimed, but a show of free speech against… demonetization on video sharing platforms. OR something.
“This is a free speech rally, my platform, Frank Speech, for all the individuals whether they’re Democrat or Republican. Right now if you talk about machines, vaccines, the border, Jesus, you speak out for anything and YouTube and Vimeo and people like you guys, the journalists, suppress it, cancel us. And try and destroy something good that’s coming out of this.
“This is a free speech rally,” he continued. “This isn’t a Trump rally. Did you call it a Trump rally?”
Klepper points out that it says “MAGA” in the event’s title and Trump is supposed to speak via video later in the day.
“You got his picture on the poster, Mike,” Klepper says. Lindell replies to that Trump “got suppressed” just like the rest of the things currently airing on national television in the segment.
Klepper pointed out that the “elongation” of this election conspiracy process from Trump supporters and amplifying of those voices by Lindell has led to death threats for otherwise anonymous election officials in several states and had harmful impacts in the real world, including the January 6 insurrection in Washington. Lindell demurred here a bit, and Klepper then called out the oscillation he keeps having about his role in all this.
“Do you either want to be the guy everybody comes to or not the guy everybody comes to?” Klepper asks. “Because you have answers for being the guy that the cyberpunks come to but you have no other answers.”
The line is a reference to Lindell saying “white hat hackers” came to him with incriminating information about “the crime of the century” but his reluctance to share it with anyone else. Later, Klepper asks what Lindell will do if Trump does not get reinstated in August, as he’s promised again and again in recent weeks. Of course, there was more fight ahead.
“Then the states are all going to pull it down because they’re doing audits in every state,” Lindell said. Which prompted Klepper for perhaps his best line of the segment.
“It’s like watching that Bigfoot show,” Klepper suggested. “They don’t find Bigfoot at the end but, if you tune in next week, maybe it’s gonna happen.”
Lindell laughed, then seemed to understand what Klepper was saying and ended the interview, walking away saying “you guys are horrible.” So, tune in next week for more, I guess.