Pat Robertson, the influential religious broadcaster who launched the Christian Broadcasting Network and was a onetime presidential candidate, has died at 93. The news was confirmed via CBN’s website.
“Pat Robertson, longtime TV host, religious broadcaster, educator, humanitarian, and one-time presidential candidate died at his home in Virginia Beach early Thursday morning. He was 93,” CBN stated.
Along with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, Robertson was a major force in the 1970s and ’80s in making evangelical conservatives a force in American politics, particularly within the Republican Party. He was a vocal proponent of shameful anti-LGBT policies and actions, some of which are once again roiling the nation as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
To the general public, Robertson was best known as the host of “The 700 Club,” a daily news and faith show which he hosted for over 50 years before retiring in 2021. “The 700 Club” currently airs on Freeform, a strange result of media consolidation and rebranding from when Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox and investor Haim Saban purchased Robertson’s The Family Channel in 1997. (Disney bought the cabler four years later for $3 billion, changing the name to ABC Family and then to Freeform in 2016.)
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Robertson took a break from “The 700 Club” in the late ’80s to run for president, but was defeated in the Republican primary by George H. W. Bush, who ended up winning the election in 1988.
In addition to his media work, Robertson created many other religious organizations, including Regent University, the American Center for Law & Justice, and the Christian Coalition. He also wrote several faith-based books.
Robertson’s conservative views were particularly hateful to the LGBTQIA+ community, on which he blamed natural disasters and said things like, “Many of those people involved in Adolf Hitler were Satanists. Many were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.”
Robertson’s wife of nearly 70 years, Dede, passed away in 2022. He is survived by four children, 14 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren. Robertson’s son Gordon is the current host of “The 700 Club.”
