My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell Grilled Over Shady Decision to Use Campaign Money to Purchase Bulk Copies of His 'Own Self-Published Memoir'

Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and a Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, was recently grilled during a NewsNation Prime interview about his campaign's decision to spend more than $187,000 — more than half of the $356,000 it raised in its first two weeks— on copies of his own memoir.

Finance records revealed that the campaign bought bulk copies of the self-published book What Are The Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO directly from Lindell's company.

The book, published in 2019, chronicles Lindell's decades-long struggle with severe crack cocaine and gambling addictions while simultaneously attempting to build his entrepreneurial career.

Lindell defended the buy, claiming he got the books for a "very good price" and uses them as campaign materials. He argued that while other candidates hand out flyers, he gives away the whole book so voters "know who I am."

"Your campaign took in more than $350,000 contributions in just under a month, but filings show your campaign spent more than half of that money on your own self-published memoir," said NewsNation Prime anchor Natasha Zouves. "Explain to people why buy all those books. Is that a wise use of campaign spending?"

"Yeah, we got them for a very good price,” Lindell said. "What you can do is instead of paying for flyers and stuff, we have to go around and do debates for about a month-and-a-half, these debates, and we gave out the books instead of giving them a little flyer about me. This is my memoir, this is my autobiography, and showing these people who I am."

"I want people to know who I was before I went out and fought these voting machine companies and fought to secure our elections in our country, which by the way is all coming to fruition," he added.

“People that have read my book, it’s my memoir, then you know who I am,” he told NewsNation.

Lindell is currently seeking the Republican nomination in the 2026 Minnesota gubernatorial election, and is currently polling in third place behind Republican candidates Lisa Demuth and Kendall Qualls.

In a hypothetical matchup against Democratic candidate and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Lindell trails 53 percent to 31 percent.

Klobuchar entered the race after incumbent Gov. Tim Walz announced he would not seek a third term.