Donald Trump might have found untapped ways to monetize the presidency for his personal fortune — but wealthy businessmen who have hitched their wagons to the president tend to find themselves losing huge amounts of money, CNN data analyst Harry Enten told anchor Erin Burnett on Tuesday evening.
No better example of this exists, he said, than Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who admitted to CNN's Donie O'Sullivan this week that his business has been essentially ruined by his promotion of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories.
"He got Mike Lindell to reveal something about himself and what he said — which is why Donie is so amazing, okay — the hit though, when he said to Donie, I've lost everything, I've lost — I had $40 million saved, it's all gone. It's all gone," said Burnett. "The rise and fall of Mike Lindell has been pretty spectacular.
"It's been very spectacular," agreed Enten. "You know, according to Mike Lindell, get this, by 2023, the number of sales or the percentage drop in sales for MyPillow, get this, dropped 95 percent. This used to be a $100 million company, well north of $100 million in terms of sales. He now claims that by 2023, that sales had actually dropped to, get this, just $5 million. Now, again, that's according to him. We can't independently verify it. But according to Mike Lindell, this whole election conspiracy stuff really made him take a hit in his wallet and his company's wallet as well."
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"Which is sort of fascinating because, you know, we look at, you know, Dan Alexander from Forbes was running numbers and saying, you know, Trump's net worth has surged higher than it has ever been before. He is minting money with his crypto and a whole lot of other things. But as for some of those who supported him, who were millionaires or billionaires before, not the case."
"No, not the case at all," said Enten. "I mean, Mike Lindell is not the the only one who's seen backlash, you know, someone who either owned or was the CEO of a company, right? Obviously, we know about Elon Musk and Tesla, right? But how about the CEO of Goya, who was essentially forced out a little bit after, in fact, he had been backing Trump, right? Or, of course, we know Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post. The sales of The Washington Post, the amount of revenue they have, has dropped significantly, especially since Bezos tried to change the editorial spin of that editorial page."
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