Woke Companies Try to Smother MyPillow
The cancel culture would love nothing better than to shut up Christians and drive them from the public square.
If the cancel culture thought they’d have a pushover in Mike Lindell, they were mistaken. The MyPillow founder has never lost any sleep over the Left’s attacks — and he doesn’t plan to start now. When a handful of companies decided to drop the popular line over Mike’s concerns over the 2020 election, he wasn’t rattled. He just vowed to stand taller for any business who might be next.
It started over the weekend, when stores like Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Kohl’s, HEB, Wayfair, and others abruptly decided to cut ties with the brand because of Lindell’s outspoken support for Donald Trump. “As soon as I went public [with my frustrations about voter fraud], within a couple of days, all of these box stores got attacked…” For the most part, he doesn’t even believe the complaints are real. What he has found is that these leftists just sit in a war room and create fake accounts that they can use to issue boycott threats to stores that carry certain products. “[It’s] a hired hit job by the Left and cancel culture,” he said on “Washington Watch” — just hours before Twitter permanently banned his account.
These corporate executives, Mike shook his head, “They all live in fear. Everyone lives in fear. That’s how cancel culture works.” At the end of the day, corporate America is so terrified of the liberal mob that they’ll succumb to anything. “And they’re the ones who end up losing, because their real customers are very upset when they [make political decisions to blacklist conservatives]. I’m hearing it [from] all over the country — people who are cutting up their credit cards [and switching brands] because of this targeting.” We can’t let this happen, he insisted. We have to send a message. “So, I’m not backing down.”
And no one else should either. Look at what happened when Goya CEO Bob Unanue refused to apologize for his partnership with Donald Trump. The Left threw everything they could at the company, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). And what happened? Americans rewarded Goya, sending sales 1,000 percent higher! Most CEOs are in such a hurry to do the mob’s bidding that they don’t stop to consider conservatives’ buying power. They’re playing the short game of appeasement, which almost always backfires. And they make these irrational decisions — alienating entire consumer bases — based entirely on fear.
“You know,” Mike pointed out, “I have 2,500 employees. We’re like a big family. And they know — we’ve been down this road before. When I spoke out in the Rose Garden [about bringing] God back into our schools and reading our Bible, I was attacked then too.” Looking back, he said, “I guess it’s good that we went through that before, so we know it’s not real. People come out and support us [even more] — and the losers end up being the big box stores that thought they were satisfying the [Left]. [In the end,] they’re losing out on the sales from the other stores that have stuck with us. They make the money, and they get the customers.”
A good example is Costco. “They [said], ‘We’re going to stick with MyPillow and with our contract.’ And, boy, they’re busier than ever… And so, people have to look at what’s real and what’s not.” In the meantime, Mike insisted, “I’m standing up for every business they think they [can boycott].”
When people call Mike and ask, “Is there hope?” Despite all that’s happening in our country and to him personally, he doesn’t hesitate. “Absolutely,” he tells them. “God’s got his hand in all this. I put 100 percent of my faith in the Lord.” And we should too.
The cancel culture would love nothing better than to shut up Christians and drive them from the public square. That’s a lot harder to do when we refuse to live in fear of anyone but God. “The Lord is on my side,” the psalmist says. “…What can man do to me?”
It takes a lot of courage to speak the truth when your livelihood is on the line. So when these business leaders are attacked — like Mike and Bob Unanue — we need to support them. Maybe you don’t need another pillow or mattress pad — buy one anyway. There are so many spineless and cowardly people out there. When you actually find one who’s going to stand up for their convictions — a pastor, business leader, or politician — stand with them. That’s how we fight back. That’s how we win.
Originally published here.
Biden Pumps out Orders, Not Oil
Here’s a sentence you’ll never see on CNN: “President Joe Biden, hoping to stack his first 100 days with as many achievements as possible, has relied heavily on the use of executive orders.” Or this: “While the orders have run the gamut from immigration to federal lands, they all offer Biden a key benefit: the ability to tout wins without going through the arduous legwork of working with Congress to pass legislation.”
But, when you switch out the names, CNN did write it about President Trump. And they are true about Joe Biden. The crucial difference is that Trump signed 29 executive orders in his first 100 days, while Biden has signed 21 (and counting) in his first week alone. In fact, he’s signed more executive orders in his first week than any president ever — quadrupling the next closest competitor (Barack Obama with five).
It sure is a funny way to achieve the national unity and the return to America’s democratic norms that President Biden promised in his inaugural address.
Unlike President Trump with his executive actions, President Biden is costing American jobs and angering our allies. He has hamstrung the oil and gas industry with an order to halt drilling and exploration on federal land, including Alaska’s north shore, as well as revoking the permit for the Keystone oil pipeline. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis joined me on Washington Watch to discuss the impact these policies will have. “It will raise energy prices,” she said.
Biden’s actions have a direct cost in jobs lost — high-paying blue-collar jobs, at that — and an indirect cost on the jobs that would follow them. That’s not to mention the higher energy prices Americans will pay to heat their homes and drive their cars, or the higher food prices that result because farmers have to pay more to run their machines. These costs will have an outsized impact on those Americans who have been hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying lockdowns. This is hurting the very people the Democratic Party says they want to help.
But the impact goes beyond the individual household; states with large oil and gas industries, from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, will suffer as well. Lummis pointed out that, since the federal government owns half the land in Wyoming, Biden’s order will be a serious shock to the state’s economy and tax revenues. “The hit to Wyoming schools and infrastructure is profound.”
President Biden’s defenders might try to argue that there are important environmental reasons to move away from oil and gas, and the economy will eventually recover. Lummis’s commonsense, American response was, “what we need to do is innovate our way out of this climate issue, not regulate our way out of the climate issue.”
But no reason that puts the interests of America first can outweigh the importance of national security. For the first time in fifty years, America achieved energy independence under President Trump’s watch. That means that oil-producing nations like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela could no longer threaten America’s energy supply, as they did in the 1970s, to bring us to our knees. But President Joe Biden has put an end to that; America will once again be beholden to foreign “bad actors” simply because they produce the energy we refuse to produce for ourselves.
From a policy perspective, President Biden’s executive actions to kill jobs and block energy production don’t make any sense. But they are “a political payback to his radical Left base,” said Lummis. Indeed, President Biden has yet to make good on his inauguration promise to unify America. Rather his actions are unilaterally further dividing America.
Originally published here.
Will Biden Stand up to the Mob?
Bishop Robert Brennan of Columbus, Ohio, celebrated a Respect Life Mass last Friday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Catholic parishioners gathered at St. Joseph Cathedral to peacefully worship and pray for the unborn and an end to abortion. However, an angry and incredibly disrespectful group of pro-abortion protesters interrupted the Mass to shout their support of abortion and protest the liturgy. The mob stormed the cathedral with signs bearing messages like “Abortion on Demand Now” and “Defund the Police. Fund Abortion.” and chanted, “Two, four, six, eight, this church teaches hate.”
The church’s message was one of love and life — far from hate. The protestors’ actions, on the other hand, were an attack on the parishioners’ ability to freely practice their faith. It should concern everyone, Catholic or not, that an angry, woke mob felt entitled and empowered to interrupt a Catholic Mass. Although the police intervened and ushered the protestors out of the church, the protestors should be held responsible.
Here, President Biden has an opportunity to defend the First Amendment and show the country that he supports his fellow Catholics’ ability to live out their faith and peacefully attend Mass. His administration should respond to this incident by enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrance (FACE) Act against these liberal activists. The 1994 measure was designed to protect entrance to abortion clinics but was amended to also protect houses of worship. The law prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person’s ability to exercise their right of religious freedom.
Intimidation and interference were exactly what the pro-abortion protestors did when they marched through St. Joseph Cathedral’s doors with their signs and shouted in the middle of Mass.
The abortion supporters violated the FACE Act and the Department of Justice should enforce the civil provisions of the FACE Act. DOJ has enforced the FACE Act many times before in protecting abortion centers and here the President has an opportunity to protect the First Amendment and signal that he will be a President that honors religious liberty.
Biden’s administration has no problem offering support and protection when it furthers the Administration’s own interest. The Biden Administration has thousands of troops in Washington, DC, for an extended amount of time, because they are worried about conservatives disrupting and protesting. Yet, there has not been a single word condemning disruptions at the church, and certainly no protections for religious adherents who now have to wonder if their religious services will be interrupted by the woke left.
For far too long, the left has attempted to silence religious adherents. Often, they told us we could keep our religion so long as it was kept private and out of the public square. The recent actions of the Columbus pro-abortion protestors prove that even keeping to our churches will not satisfy the cancel culture. If President Biden is serious about unity, he can start by protecting those that the left seeks to cancel because of their religion. The pro-abortion protestors violated the FACE Act, and the Department of Justice should act accordingly by enforcing the FACE Act’s civil provisions, as it has done many times before.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
