Sophia Michaels
In a stranger-than-fiction moment, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s return to Jimmy Kimmel Live took place from inside a claw machine on Tuesday night.
Explaining that Lindell had been trying to get back on his show for a long time, Kimmel invited him on caveat that he do so while sitting inside the infamously rigged arcade game.
“A lot of you have reached out to me: ‘Mike, don’t do it, he’s going to attack you. Why did you agree to go inside a claw game?’” Lindell said during a Facebook live stream earlier that day. “Which I did, because they, you can’t go inside the studio if you’re not vaccinated. And of course, I’m not vaccinated.”
Yet in the show’s monologue, Kimmel clarified, “I did not insist that Mike be in a claw machine because he’s not vaccinated. I insisted he be in a claw machine because it’s hilarious,” adding, “This isn’t a political statement. This is just for fun.”
At the start of the segment, Kimmel introduced Lindell, announcing that in order to “help him overcome his debilitating fear of machines, we have installed him inside a claw machine.” Lindell proceeded to dive face first into his failed run for chairman of the Republican National Committee and his miscalculated $40 million “crusade” to fight “rigged elections.”
Despite the bizarre sighting of the MyPillow Guy tossing stuffed animals from inside a Dave and Buster’s arcade game, Lindell was a good sport—even when his doppelganger (James Adomian) showed up to break him out of arcade jail.
The pillow CEO, who has pledged fealty to Donald Trump, has repeatedly requested to return to Kimmel since his first appearance in April 2021. Yet while his plans of convincing the nation that the 2020 presidential count was 20 million off may have to wait until his next cameo, Lindell did manage to overcome his fear of machines… not that he needed much convincing.
