Trump’s Reported Claim of Being ‘Reinstated’ Was ‘Probably’ Inspired by Mike Lindell (According to Mike Lindell)

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Former President Donald Trump is reportedly telling people that he expects to be “reinstated” as President in August of this summer, and according to The Daily Beast, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell believes Trump got that information from him.

Of course, there is no constitutional recourse to simply reinstate a former president who has lost a reelection bid that has been certified by Congress. But Trump hates being considered a loser, especially after he so vociferously derided his opponent, President Joe Biden, as the worst candidate in history.

As a result, Trump has continued to amplify the dangerous idea that the election was somehow “stolen” though there is no evidence that there was widespread and systemic election fraud that would change the outcome. On Tuesday, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman shared on Twitter that Trump has been telling people “he expects he will get reinstated by August.”

Close followers of Trump and his surrogates who have promoted baseless election fraud conspiracies probably recognized the August reinstatement claim as something said last month by Lindell during an interview with Steve Bannon for his War Room podcast.

Will Summer and Asawin Suebsang simply reached out to Lindell about Trump’s reported claims. Here’s what they found:

On Wednesday, Lindell, who has briefed Trump at the White House and also financially backed several efforts to nullify the 2020 election results, said he doesn’t “know for sure” if he inspired Trump’s notion of an August restoration. Lindell also told The Daily Beast that his August assertion is more of an estimate, and aspirational.

“The month of August, for this, is subjective,” he said in an interview. “It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don’t know if it’ll be that month, specifically. I started saying August…about four weeks ago. That was my estimation. I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That’s how I landed on August, and I’m hopeful that that is correct.”

It is entirely plausible, if not likely, that Trump heard about his potential reinstatement from the MyPillow CEO. Trump advisers have dismissed the claim that Trump was sharing this preposterous idea with others as simple musings, according to a Washington Post report.

Even Haberman suggested during a Wednesday appearance on CNN that Trump was just echoing what he had heard from surrogates (like Lindell, or maybe Sidney Powell) but added that, when the former president and presumptive leader of the Republican party is sharing such claims, even in passing? That’s newsworthy. And some might even say, nuts.