Someone needs a hug after this combative interview with Mike Lindell, but it might not be CNN reporter Drew Griffin.

       The My Pillow CEO offered the journalist a comforting cuddle during the heated repartee as the two went back and forth on whether there was, in fact, any credible evidence supporting claims China hacked the presidential election.

       After presenting assessments from nine cybersecurity experts who say Mr Lindell had “proof of nothing”, Mr Griffin suggested he could possibly be the victim of a scam.

       “Are you worried about me? We should give a hug, you’re worried about old Mike? Oh God bless you,” he said, seemingly sarcastically, as tensions escalated.

       Mr Lindell is hosting a “cyber symposium” in South Dakota next week, when he plans to release 37 terabytes of data he says will show election hacking. He is offering a $5m prize to anyone who can debunk his data.

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       In advance of the event, Mr Lindell sent CNN six screenshots of what he said are “one-piece” of 1.3 billion lines of data from the election showing timestamps of when votes were being flipped from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

       It will show, he says, “100 per cent” proof that China hacked the election and flipped the votes in every single state.

       CNN sent the snapshot of data to their experts, who said the material didn’t show any specific actions of any kind, whether election-related or not.

       “Ok, so he said that’s nothing huh? Then he’s wrong, you didn’t hire a cyber expert,” Mr Lindell responded.

       CNN also spoke to election officials in 15 counties where they said paper ballots were counted by systems that are never connected to the internet, and that they were audited against the machine count.

       When Mr Griffin suggested the expert in pillows might not be an expert in understanding how votes are cast, collected and tabulated in the country, Mr Lindell said that he absolutely does know how voting works.

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       “What you don’t understand is after they’re tabulated, they can get hacked after the fact, which they were, because Donald Trump was going to win anyway,” Mr Lindell said.

       “I’m not wrong! I’ve checked it out! I’ve spent millions! You need to trust me!” he added later in the interview.