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This week: - The MyPillow election fraud epic, reviewed. - Iâm writing a book about QAnon! An Inconvenient Pillow MyPillow magnate Mike Lindell has been hiding out. Guarded by what heâs described as a âheavy securityâ detail of retired Navy SEALs, the Trump superfan has been pulling getting by with three hours of sleep a night, focusing all of his energies on cooking up a âdocu-movieâ that will prove once and for all that Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump. âI donât trust anything right now,â Lindell said in an interview with a North Dakota talk radio station this week. âItâs very evil out there.â On Friday, Lindell released his masterwork: Absolute Proof, a three-hour conspiracy theory bonanza, ultimately cut down to two hours, that exists in a nether-world where the election is still in play and voting machines arenât queuing up billion-dollar lawsuits against Lindell and his compatriots. If the documentary fails to get Trump back in the White House, Lindell claims weâre headed towards an apocalypse straight out of the Book of Revelation. âItâs the end times, we pray and we go to heaven, thatâs it, itâs over,â Lindell said in the talk radio interview. With the hope of averting a rapture, I had the pleasure of watching Absolute Proof on Friday, and I can tell you: itâs bad. Still, the film, presented in four two-hour blocks on One America News paid for by Lindell on Friday, does offer some insight into the current MAGA deadender mindset. Most of Absolute Proof is set at the news desk of a little-known right-wing media outlet even more obscure than OAN. Lindell, who doesnât seem to have rehearsed his lines or been open to second takes, gestures at PDFâs blown up on a screen and invites a rotating cast of post-election also-rans on board to tell him how spies from various countries stole the election. âYou guys are going to be absolutely amazed,â Lindell declares at the start. Three months after the election, Lindell and his crew, which includes viral Rudy Giuliani witness [Mellissa Carone](, havenât cooked up one coherent conspiracy about what happened. Instead, each witness flogs the claims that launched them personally to a short-lived fame on the right, with Lindell occasionally waving them to hurry up so he can move onto the next segment. The vibe is like a particularly unhinged house party, with Lindell as an especially antic host. Lindell says he invited self-proclaimed âinventor of emailâ Shiva Ayyadurai on after meeting him a few weeks ago, for example, and lets Ayyadurai do his things for a few minutes before rocketing off to the next guest, who has something totally different to talk about. Production-wise, Absolute Proof definitely looks like something Lindell produced on three hours of sleep a night. Intervieweesâ title cards are misspelled, and Lindell constantly flubs his phrasingâhe accuses spies of affecting the election âcyberly,â and denounces Facebook chief Mark âSuckerbuck.â Thatâs on top of the deliberate but equally inexplicable choicesâthe music swells like a horror movie when guests are talking, even though tonally the rest of the film is meant to mimic a news broadcast. The film is also riddled with B-roll that goes on a few seconds too long, notably including a man holding a hammer and sickle in a field to ominous effect. Hanging over the entire vanity project is the threat of crushing lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic, the two voting machine companies Lindell and his allies have smeared for months as election thieves. In an apparent bid to minimize their already hefty legal liability, OAN ran a 90-second disclaimer insisting the video was all Lindellâs idea and that OAN itself isnât making any allegations about the voting machine manufacturers. For his part, Lindell holds off naming the companies for the first few minutes of the film, referring vaguely just to âvoting machines.â By the halfway point, though, heâs in full swing, accusing voting machines of ripping off the whole country. That should leave at least one part of the movieâs audience satisfied with the movie: the lawyers representing Dominion and Smartmatic. Iâm writing a book about QAnon! If you like Right Richter, you might be interested in this news: Iâm writing a book for HarperCollins about [QAnon]( and all the ways itâs seeping into our politics and culture. Itâs due out later this yearâstay tuned! You can [sign up for Right Richter here]( and follow me on Twitter [@WillSommer]( for even more. [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC
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