Anderson cooper: welcome to the whole story. I'm anderson cooper. Since his defeat in 2020, former president donald trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the election was stolen, the result somehow rigged by democrats. There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud, but that hasn't stopped mr. Trump and his allies from relentlessly pushing these lies. Now, many of those same allies are gathering again, ready to claim fraud if the former president is once again defeated in november. Cnn's donie o'sullivan spent the past few months with some of trump's biggest promoters, who continued to spread doubts about the security of the election and are doing whatever they can to ensure trump win. He begins with the most famous pillow salesman in america. [music playing] donie o'sullivan: how are you? my name is donie o'sullivan. Woman: ok, tony. Donie o'sullivan: donie. Man: johnny o'sullivan. Donie o'sullivan: no, not johnny, like johnny mitchell. Man: tony? donie o'sullivan: donie woman: donie? man: are you an irish boy? donie o'sullivan: yes. Man: god bless you. So am i. Donie o'sullivan: as a journalist, i spend most of my time traveling across the country, talking to people. Man: my name is go [bleep] yourself. Donie o'sullivan: and are you from ohio? about who they are. Man: i committed to dressing like a crusader maybe five, six years ago. Donie o'sullivan: and how they see the world. Man: if you tell me you're going to release the kraken, show me the freaking kraken, for crying out loud. Donie o'sullivan: jfk. Woman 1: senior. Woman 2: senior. Donie o'sullivan: is jesus reincarnated. All while trying to keep an open mind. Woman: biden has never been inside the white house. They are at tyler perry studios in atlanta. Donie o'sullivan: as conspiracy theories hurt regular people. Woman 1: we will get through this. Woman 2: it's caused me to lose my son. Donie o'sullivan: and lies leads to violence. Man: bringing live rounds right now and shooting people. Donie o'sullivan: i think we better move beyond this police line. In this land of misinformation. Man: get that out of my face. Donie o'sullivan: i'm waiting for the mypillow guy. Presenter: it's happening now. Other things happening now. The great replacement theory. You all know that name, right? they want to replace american citizens who love the country with people who have no love for the country. Michael lindell: mypillow sandals, $25. And for the first time ever donie o'sullivan: last time i saw mike in person was about three years ago at his cyber symposium in south dakota, where he said he was going to prove the 2020 election was stolen. Michael lindell: there's hacks in cyber attacks every day. Donie o'sullivan: he didn't. Michael lindell: so i don't need your people to go out and doctor the evidence and put out on, mike lindell's a conspiracy theoriest. Donie o'sullivan: so you haven't somehow, three years later, he's still doing what he's doing. I'm still doing what i'm doing. Neither of us are the better for it. I bet you this is him. Is this this seems like mike's convoy. Michael lindell: hey, there's my buddy! donie o'sullivan: mike! michael lindell: what's going on? donie o'sullivan: how are you doing? [chuckles] it's been a long time. Michael lindell: what's going on? how you doing? donie o'sullivan: welcome to las vegas. Michael lindell: good to see you. Donie o'sullivan: did you just landed? michael lindell: a lot of history here. Did you ever read my book? i lived here for a while. A lot of bad things. Donie o'sullivan: we'd come to las vegas to meet the country's most famous pillow salesman. Look michael lindell: are you going to pay attention this time? donie o'sullivan: i'll try. I'll try. And one of the country's biggest election deniers. Man: (singing) by the dawn's early light. Donie o'sullivan: mike was in town for a couple of mega events. The election was still seven months away, but here, it was all about getting trump back into the white house. Woman: yeah, my husband has this one. Donie o'sullivan: it felt like half tent revival. Man: because we're just talking to god right now. Donie o'sullivan: sure. Man: father god, i just thank you for donie, lord. Donie o'sullivan: half trump rally. Man: where's all the media that's snaking around here? you can come right up here. Donie o'sullivan: or it seemed like everyone was selling something. Movies. Michael flynn: i'm going to shamelessly plug my movie. Number one on amazon of all dvds that's sold on amazon. Donie o'sullivan: and miracles. Woman: balances the brain hemispheres. Donie o'sullivan: ok. Woman: yeah. Man: you allow the cells to detox and come back into harmony with the body. Donie o'sullivan: i feel like i'm being abducted by aliens or something. But mike was here to sell more than pillows. He was on a crusade to save american democracy. Presenter: it's thursday, 18 april, the year of our lord, 2024. Crowd: trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! stephen k. Bannon: we've got the great mike lindell up here. [cheering] and no, we're not going to start with an infomercial on lumpy pillows or free shipping. Michael lindell: promo code war room. Man: hey, mike. How are you? donie o'sullivan: can we go here? michael lindell: i think last time you interviewed me, i lost my voice. Remember that? donie o'sullivan: yeah, back in 2021? michael lindell: yeah. Donie o'sullivan: mike, it's three years on. Michael lindell: right. Donie o'sullivan: you're still doing this? michael lindell: yeah. Got to save our country, huh? donie o'sullivan: there's a lot of people in this for cynical reasons, right? to make money, to get famous. You strike me as somebody who truly, truly believes the 2020 election was rigged? michael lindell: you can't see i'm a grifter when i'm $40 million in and they keep attacking my company, and i'm decimated. My battle is to get rid of the machines and get to paper ballots handcounted. It's not about a conspiracy of overturning the 2020 election. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): but mike did try to overturn the 2020 election, something he doesn't like pointed out. Michael lindell: you would want it to be the best in the world, but this isn't about the 2020 election. What they're going to show donie o'sullivan: what am i going to learn here tonight? michael lindell: what you're going to learn is that their computers that are used our election have god keys, decryption keys in there. They have the passcodes inside them, and they're on the internet, and they're using software that was illegal, and that's what the supreme court will see themselves. Now, don't you think the judge should at least open up and say, hey, you guys, we got a big problem here, and it's connected to where? china. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): it's hard to follow what mike actually believes, but ultimately, he's convinced, wrongly, that the 2020 election was stolen through hacked voting machines, and now he wants to get rid of them. Michael lindell: tomorrow's the big day. If they pull that in, it'll be 90 they will vote. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): we met mike a day before the supreme court was due to consider a case he had funded against election officials in arizona in an effort to get rid of voting machines there. Michael lindell: are we going live on frankspeech? subject: yeah. Michael lindell: yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to let you guys film us being live on frankspeech. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): after mike and other trump supporters were kicked off social media platforms following january 6th for spreading election conspiracy theories. Michael lindell: we have a social media platform. It's like a youtube/twitter combination. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): mike set up his own social media and video streaming platform, frankspeech. Michael lindell: this thing over here at frankspeech and lindell tv, has done two things. One, is gave us a platform to reach out to all of you with my pillow products, and then also to keep our voice going. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): it's got its own slate of tv shows. Wayne allyn: our guest is ben berkman, who's been on here many times. We love ben. Ben berkman: hey, wayne. It's great to be back with you. [dramatic music] rudy giuliani: good evening. This is rudy giuliani with the rudy giuliani show. Michael lindell: i want to tell you, when we all started winning, and that was on january 7 and january 8, of 2021. Our real president lost his twitter. Remember that? so everybody that had even spoke out about the election or questioned it, they were deplatformed but since that day, our voices kept getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger. I set up the cause of america, my own network, frankspeech. I said, i got to reach the public. God wins in the end. Thank you. God bless you. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): but mike wasn't the only one here with an election conspiracy theory. Man: the election was stolen in six battleground states. Those six states were decided by the votes of illegal aliens who came in through our open border. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): these false beliefs about the last election are being used as a pretext to cause chaos and confusion about the next election, and they've spread far beyond this room in vegas. Kim yeater: freedom! freedom! protester: this is not a fight between democrats versus republicans. Kim yeater: come on. Come on. Protester: this is a fight against good and evil. Donie o'sullivan: do you think it will be a fair election? protester: i think they're going to try and cheat. Protester: our voting system was always a facade. Donie o'sullivan: are you concerned if trump loses? protester: yeah. Donie o'sullivan: that there will be another january 6? protester: no, i think there will be a civil war. [dramatic music] donie o'sullivan (voiceover): we'd come to the southern border in california to meet a religious group called take our border back. Kim yeater: come on. Come on. So all you live streamers, this is it. This is what it's going to take action. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. We've got to take action. Close the border! donie o'sullivan (voiceover): one of its leaders is kim yeater. Kim yeater: we're at war, and it is a spiritual war against principalities of darkness. [ululating] come on, we're appealing to heaven. Mexico, that's right! protester: we're rolling down to the border to get the message through. Kim yeater: freedom! [cheering] amen. Amen. Protesters: amen. Kim yeater: amen, father god. Protester: hallelujah! kim yeater: hallelujah! father god, we come before you, god, in the name of jesus. Father, we come before you. We love you. We praise you. We speak out to mexico right now. We speak out to the ends of the earth right now. We pray for victory over satan. Victory over the enemy. Let's break bread in jesus's name. [curious music] donie o'sullivan: kim. How are you? kim yeater: come on. So good to meet you. Donie o'sullivan: how are you doing? i'm donie. Kim yeater: tony donie o'sullivan: donie, yeah. Kim yeater: great, to meet you. Donie o'sullivan: nice to meet you. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): kim is a life coach. Kim yeater: donie, are you a human doing or a human being? donie o'sullivan (voiceover): and now an online influencer. Kim yeater: do you see my bling? so, mike, i've been censored and canceled. Michael lindell: wow. [interposing voices] michael lindell: well, i'm going to go like this. No way. Donie o'sullivan: you really got politically involved in 2020. Kim yeater: that's a great question, donie. So i got to tell you, i am not into politics at all, nor do i have an interest in politics. I'm into truth. So i can't say i got politically involved. I got truthinvolved. This is the take our border back north america alliance. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): the group's name may be take our border back. Kim yeater: border, border, border, we're here because of the border. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): but the topics here. Protester: what we're dealing with today is an evil oligarchy. Protester: it's we the people versus the deep state. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): range from fighting communism. Protester: he told my mom, honey, they're coming for me. My mom said, what? who? the communists. Communism is here. They're not practicing it, they're enforcing it here. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): to fifth generation warfare. Protester: fifth generation warfare is basically anything that's nonkinetic, vtok, voice to skull technology. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): and of course, elections. Kim yeater: does the ballot box matter? does your voice being heard matter? protester: we all know what happened. Joe biden didn't win. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): many of the people at this event believe american elections are in some way corrupt, like nol. No l: regardless of the problems of the election, the process, the machines, our government keeping us in our boxes and not being able to congregate together. [mellow music] [laughter] donie o'sullivan: what would you describe yourself as? are you an activist? [interposing voices] donie o'sullivan: influencer? are you an influencer? no l: they say influencer. I don't know like how true that rings. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): online she's known as patriot mom 007. No l: are some things in place for the illegals voting and being able to register in really sneaky ways. Donie o'sullivan: this idea that undocumented immigrants who are coming into the country today will vote in november's election. No l: probably. No doubt. Donie o'sullivan: when it comes in the presidential federal election. Do you think that's actually going to happen? no l: i mean, i think the probability is better than not. I mean, if we're being realistic and honest about it donie o'sullivan: in a meaningful way? no l: do you not think it's possible that that's going to happen, just knowing what you do, and all the donie o'sullivan: they would need citizenship, though, right? to vote? no l: well, ideally. Well, ideally, yes. I mean, if you're following the laws, but if you're already a group of people who don't follow the laws. Kim yeater: that's not even a question anymore. There's election fraud, period, period. There's so much evidence. You see, in 2020, my vote was stolen. So that was the kind of great awakening for me to realize that my vote had been taken. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): kim says her interest in elections began when she claims she went to vote in 2020 and was told someone already had voted using her identity. Kim yeater: we didn't vote. We hadn't voted at all. We hadn't mailed anything and nothing, and so that was the beginning of, something's not right. How are they thinking that i voted? who voted for me? when we started taking our elections back donie o'sullivan (voiceover): but kim was given a provisional ballot and was able to cast a vote. Donie o'sullivan: you, having the issue, you had to vote in 2020, you don't necessarily know that has anything to do with undocumented immigrants, right? kim yeater: so i personally do not know that. Now, if we're going to talk about the illegal immigrants coming in and having the ability to vote, that's a question that we all need to ask. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): undocumented immigrants are not allowed to vote in federal elections in the united states, and multiple studies have shown it is extremely rare. Man: i'm concerned about the number of illegals that are in our country that are able to vote. Donie o'sullivan (voiceover): but it's a lie that's being pushed over, and over, and over again by maga influencers. Man: i can't imagine how many illegals are registered to vote in a state li