AP Photo/Alex Brandon
- Mike Lindell fell for a prank-caller pretending to be Donald Trump during a 48-hour livestream.
- Lindell introduced "our real president," and then the caller abandoned the prank.
- It happened during a livestream for the launch of Lindell's own social-media site, Frank.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell had a difficult telethon launch for his new social-media site, Frank.
Technical hitches and prank callers plagued the "Frankathon" – including one caller who pretended to be former President Donald Trump.
Lindell appeared to fall for it.
Ron Blackman, a British internet personality who makes prank-call videos and podcasts under the title "The Macron Show," called in to the livestream.
When Lindell answered his phone, Blackman said he had Trump "on standby."
He then played a recording of Trump saying "hello everybody."
"Oh we have the president here, our real president, everyone," Lindell said to the livestream audience, apparently taken in by the call. "Hello, Mr. President."
-Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) April 19, 2021
The prank didn't last long, though.
"Macronshow.com, b******," Blackman shouted back, using the name of his website.
Lindell quickly hung up, before saying that the call was caused by a "hack."
"You see what they're doing? They're attacking us," he said. "They're hacking into our phones."
Lindell, a staunch supporter of Trump who has repeatedly pushed voter-fraud conspiracy theories about the presidential election, first announced plans to launch his own social-media site in early March after Twitter banned him.
After a series of delays, including a disastrous VIP launch, Lindell launched a limited version of the site on Monday, with what he billed as a two-day livestream.
A number of guests joined him on video-call, including the former Trump advisors Michael Flynn, Ben Carson, and Steve Bannon, the actor Scott Baio, the singer Ted Nugent, and the vloggers Diamond and Silk.
The lawyer Alan Dershowitz also dialed in to speak about MyPillow's $1.6 billion lawsuit against voting-technology company Dominion.
The site was meant to launch with a social-media element that Lindell called a "YouTube-Twitter combination," but users were unable to create accounts Monday, which he blamed on an attack.
"We were attacked by every country, everything," he said during the livestream, adding that it was "probably the biggest ever."
He didn't cite evidence of an attack, and said: "I don't know if it was bots or what."
Lindell had previously said he spent millions of dollars on the site's security because he expected it to be the victim of cyberattacks.
"We're going to be attacked, but I have my own servers and everything," he said in a recent video.
Lindell has repeatedly touted the "Frankathon" as a 48-hour livestream and said that he personally would broadcast throughout, but he said in the early hours of Tuesday morning that he would sign off at some point to sleep and roll videos on the site instead.