Last year’s voicemails and emails came from his supporters, praising his work and asking if he could get in touch with them Donald Trump.
Not a crazy question Mike Lindellthe pillow salesman who is now making a name for himself by questioning election results.
But the callers and writers got it wrong, Mike Lindell: They reached out to a semi-retired, 77-year-old professor living in Seattle who had absolutely no idea how to reach the former president.
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The professor’s recent spate of mistaken identities gives a glimpse of what it’s like to share the same name with someone famous — or, in this case, infamous. It’s the lesser known version of booking Four Seasons Total Landscaping when you wanted to book the Four Seasons.
The professor is deliberate with his words, speaking slowly, after taking time to think. The pillow salesman may be the opposite: He goes very fast with an exaggerated showmanship common to Trump and those within his domain.
Lindell, the professor, initially felt a little embarrassed when a man with the same name entered the national stage. For years, the professor’s name appeared first on Google after he spent his professional career researching and teaching in the field of emergency preparedness. Now he falls under the other Mike Lindell. (This reporter recently found his mention by accident while looking up what the pillow man was doing in hand counts.)
There’s a feeling, he said, that the name has been “tainted,” though he’s never suffered any personal consequences for that — aside from cases of mistaken identity — since he’s long been a fixture in his career.
“It’s a bit like the idea of picking up a slug; that kind of feeling of disgust was my immediate reaction,” the professor said.
Why some people think they’re reaching the pillowslinger at a university email address is beyond the professor, but his public contact information should be posted somewhere where Lindell fans hang out.
“His political and personal views are so different from mine, I think this is the kindest way I can put it,” the elder Lindell said. “It’s a kind of optical illusion that we even live on the same planet.”
He feels some sympathy for the man who shares his name, who he believes has lost his way simply because “it’s sad to see another human being engage in that kind of self-destructive behavior.” He also sometimes feels a little for Trump, “although it is only for nanoseconds.”
Mike Lindell screens his calls (too much spam, aside from the name issue) so that he never comes into direct contact with a caller trying to find the other person. He deletes the emails he received about the election activist. It is at most a mild nuisance and only occasionally.
When he goes to a conference or checks into a hotel, there is sometimes a raised eyebrow or a joke from someone who saw the name and now sees the man, but not the one they see on TV.
Lindell also jokes: “He sells pillows and I put students to sleep, so we’re kind of in the same business.”
• The headline of this article was changed on April 16, 2024 to remove a reference to Oregon.
