Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani disclosed that his consulting LLC took in just over $1,200 in May from 2020 election conspiracy impresario Mike Lindell’s company MyPillow, even after promoting the product every day on his YouTube and Rumble channels.
On the streaming sites, Giuliani produces hour-long episodes where he rants and raves about the hottest conservative topics of the day, almost always pausing—either at the beginning, middle, or end—to plug Lindell’s wares.
On a recent episode, after discussing how Democratic “Marxism” is destroying American cities and people need to “rise up,” Lindell hops on—in a prerecorded ad—to hype clearance sales like goose down comforters, “proprietary” kitchen towels, flannel sheets, and random items like flip flops and T-shirts, which all come at a steep discount thanks to the promo code “Rudy.”
Giuliani’s been intertwined with Lindell ever since the far-right’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He’s been advertising MyPillow on X since as far back as 2021, when he called for people to stand with Lindell—and buy pillows—to prevent free speech from being “extinguished by Democrat and #BigTechCensorship.”
“Practical Advice,” Giuliani suggested in a tweet at the time, “Buy #MyPillow items and give them out as gifts so the attempted censorship will fail.”
Giuliani’s advertisements for the brand have shifted to streaming sites after getting booted from radio for repeating election conspiracies His “The Rudy Giuliani Show” debuted on YouTube this May after WABC kicked him off.
Also on the channel is his other stream, “America’s Mayor Live.”
Giuliani has a decent audience on streaming sites. On YouTube, he over 500,000 subscribers. His hour-long streams averaged around 4,000 views, with a few of them maxing out at around 6,000. On Rumble, he has over 80,000 subscribers and does better viewership, frequently getting over 10,000 views.
But according to new files in Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, despite Giuliani’s ongoing promotion of the pillows every single day, Giuliani Communications LLC took in $1,227 in May from MyPillow Inc.
Giuliani filed for bankruptcy last December after he was found guilty of defamation for accusing two Georgia election workers of stealing votes in 2020. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, were awarded $148 million in damages against Giuliani.
It’s unclear if the money from MyPillow is from the ad spend, affiliate sales with his promo code, or both.
Then again, Lindell’s company isn’t in a place to drop big bucks. His lawyers say he can no longer pay his legal bills, he owes $5 million to a random person who debunked one of his biggest conspiracies, and he’s still staring down billions in defamation charges from election companies.
Last August, Lindell told Steve Bannon that the company was struggling to access credit from banks that no longer wish to work with him. In July, the Daily Dot reported that the company was auctioning over 850 items including shipping trucks, manufacturing equipment, and office furniture in an attempt to raise money.
However, the company has long partnered with conservative influencers on discount codes for its wares.
It’s possible that, given the frequent advertising over the past few years, the market is saturated.
MyPillow, though, was Giuliani’s lowest source of income in May.
He pulled in $11,400 from Balance of Nature, a supplement company that has been subject to FDA warnings about the claims it makes being unreliable, $8,333 from Newsmax, and $15,486 from WABC for his canceled talk radio show.
He also pulled in $2,247 in payouts from Twitter, where he has 1.7 million followers.
Despite tens of thousands of dollars in income, Giuliani still managed to post a $36,573 loss for the month. That’s because of the $45,000 monthly salary he paid himself from his company, as well as tens of thousands of dollars in Amazon purchases and Netflix, Prime Video, Kindle, Paramount+, and Apple subscriptions and services.
While he promised to be a responsible steward of the estate, Giuliani spent $120,000 in January, and on March 3 racked up 28 Apple.com RECORD STORE charges worth hundreds of dollars.
Giuliani also spent $9.99 that month on a documentary called “Into The Light,” which takes viewers “through the fundamentals of change from bondage in sin to freedom in Christ,” according to the movie’s Vimeo page, the Daily Dot reported last month.
That movie is a “teaching documentary” that tries to show viewers how to break their addiction to pornography, and says that “nothing blocks missions, shatters ministries, and destroys families like pornography does,” promising to “help convict, inspire, and equip you to kill sin.”
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