President Trump was “chosen by God” to run for the White House, My Pillow founder Mike Lindell said on the opening day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in suburban D.C.

Mr. Lindell, a 57-year-old businessman who advertises heavily on conservative outlets, repeatedly claimed during his nine-minute speech Thursday that Mr. Trump was picked by a higher power to seek the presidency.

Recalling his recovery from crack cocaine and alcohol addiction, Mr. Lindell said he “woke up” in 2009 “oblivious as to what was going on in our country.”

“What I saw before me were friends unemployed, terrible political correctness, people saying ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ and people trying to take God out of everything and not even acknowledging Jesus Christ,” said Mr. Lindell. “Quite frankly it looked like the End Times prophesied in the bible.”

“I now bring you back in time to the summer of 2015,” Mr. Lindell continued. “I see Donald Trump coming down an escalator and announcing he is running for president. For me it was a divine and miraculous moment — I felt something miraculous was about to unfold.”

Despite being admittedly ignorant about politics at first — “I didn’t know a liberal from a conservative,” he said — Mr. Lindell recalled being moved by a meeting he had with Mr. Trump near the end of his campaign.

“Donald Trump invited me to meet him at Trump Tower in New York City,” he said. “I walked into his office with high hopes on August 15, 2016. I walked out of that office after meeting with him, and I knew God had chosen him for such a time as this.

“God answered our prayers, our millions of prayer, and gave us grace and a miracle happened on November 8, 2016,” Mr. Lindell said. “We were given a second chance and time granted to get our country back on track with our conservative values and getting people saved in Jesus’ name.”

Accordingly, Mr. Lindell claimed that divine appointment made Mr. Trump a better leader than his presidential predecessors.

“As I stand before you today, I see the greatest president in history,” Mr. Lindell said. “Of course he is. He was chosen by God.”

Mr. Lindell launched My Pillow in 2004 in his home state of Minnesota. The company has subsequently sold more than 43 million pillows and employed over 1,000 workers as of late 2018, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. Television commercials for the product, typically featuring Mr. Lindell, have aired more than 2.5 million times in that same 15-year span, the report said.

He has since met with Mr. Trump on several occasions, including in April at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“The president shook my hand and told me, ‘You are doing a great job, Michael.’ He also said he is sleeping great on his MyPillow,” Mr. Lindelltold the Star-Tribune.

More recently, Mr. Lindell attended a meeting on the opioid crisis held at the White House in October.