MSNBC’s Joe and Mika owe me an apology, Trump conspiracy theorist says

It’s probably time for MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to turn their attention to Mike Lindell now that the couple hit a reset of sorts with President-elect Donald Trump.
The MyPillow chief executive, who’s been a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election, expressed some vindication after the hosts told their viewers they met with Trump and then watched their ratings plummet.
Lindell spoke on “Real America’s Voice” with host John Fredericks Thursday:
Fredericks: “What do you think about the media shakeout? You look at MSNBC and CNN, their ratings have tanked since Trump won. In fact, they were so bad that I’m assuming the suits in the C Suite sent Joe and Mika down to kiss Trump’s ring at MAL. For 6 months they called him Hitler and everything else in the book, fascist. How do you think this ends up with them?
Lindell: “You’re exactly right. The two people you mentioned – Joe and Mika – they attacked me more than any other two journalists in history. It was relentless. The names they called me – they attacked MyPillow directly. I could have went after them with a defamation suit. But I just said the heck with them.”
The MSNBC anchor team had been so critical of Trump that, in September, Scarborough said that “it’s not a reach” to compare him to Hitler. MSNBC pulled “Morning Joe” from the air the Monday after the assassination attempt on Trump this past summer.
On Monday’s show, the hosts said they had reached out to Trump last Thursday and met with him the next day. “It was the first time we have seen him in seven years,” Brzezinski said.
She said Trump was “cheerful, upbeat,” even as the three of them discussed issues they disagreed on.
There was a double-digit drop in total viewers the day after the hosts talked about their meeting with Trump.
Lindell, meanwhile, owes $5 million to a software engineer for breach of contract in a dispute over data that Lindell claims proves that China interfered in the U.S. 2020 elections and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.
Lindell is also the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems in the District of Columbia that says he falsely accused the company of rigging the 2020 presidential election. He’s also the target of a separate defamation lawsuit in Minnesota by a different voting machine company, Smartmatic.
Lindell has conceded that he and MyPillow are struggling financially. Fox News, which had been one of his biggest advertising platforms, stopped running MyPillow commercials in January in a payment dispute. Two law firms that had been defending him against lawsuits by Dominion and Smartmatic quit last fall. He acknowledged that he owed them millions of dollars.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.