We called Bob Zeidman, the conservative Republican who took up a $5 million challenge to disprove one of Mike Lindell’s claims about the 2020 election.
Lindell, of course, is the Fox News pillow advertiser who became a huge Donald Trump supporter, visiting the White House in January 2021 to discuss ways to keep Trump in power. Lindell has since kept up his claims of a stolen election. At a three-day symposium in South Dakota, Lindell offered a bounty to anyone who could disprove his computer “evidence” that China captured and changed the votes from US voting machines.
It’s best to listen to Zeidman unspool his yarn on NPR. But here is the heart of our conversation, describing the computer files Lindell’s people gave him in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Zeidman: I said, what if I put this into Microsoft Word, and see what it shows me? And… it was pages and pages of numbers in one case…. and in the other cases, a table full of gibberish, as if someone had sat there for hours and just typed random stuff into a word processor.
Inskeep: And then translated it over and gave it to you and said, This is from the Chinese?
Zeidman: Right…. I called up my wife on the phone, and I whispered to her as I'm walking back to the hotel. I said, “Think about what you want to do with $5 million.”
After hearing this, NPR’s Eric Marrapodi came by to say he appreciated the “nerding out.” Which was the key to this story.
Lindell made a claim involving computers, which we depend on but don’t understand. That lack of understanding is corrosive. Who’s to say if his claim is right or wrong?
It would be better if we all understood technology better (which is on my mind as I consider what to write next!) but short of that, it helps to have someone take a serious look, and have his findings confirmed by a panel of three arbitrators.
If you’re seeing this column for the first time, Differ We Must a phrase in a letter by Lincoln. Those three words summarize an essential skill of democracy. Differ We Must is also the title of my forthcoming Lincoln biography. It tells his life story through his meetings with people who disagreed with him. You can preorder here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670070/differ-we-must-by-steve-inskeep/