There’s a new quote from Pat Robertson circulating on social media that supposedly shows the far-right pastor blaming the coronavirus pandemic on oral sex. Robertson is quoted as saying, “Some of these young uns are doing all kinds of unnatural things with their sex organs.” Admittedly, it sounds like something Robertson would say in real life. But it’s totally fake.
The quote actually comes from a website called the Business Standard News, which either creates “satire” or intentionally fake news, depending on how you interpret their business model. But whatever you call it, Robertson didn’t actually blame the coronavirus pandemic on “chemicals from ladies’ private parts.”
From the fake news site:
During an appearance on “The 700 Club,” Robertson blamed the coronavirus on oral sex.
“Some of these young uns are doing all kinds of unnatural things with their sex organs,” said Robertson. “When people do that, they transfer all kinds of chemicals from ladies’ private parts and that’s where I think the virus came from. We never had this kind of thing when I was coming up. But no one was committing oral sex back then.”
Robertson previously blamed 9/11 on witches and lesbians.
As Right Wing Watch, an extremist monitoring organisation, notes on Twitter, they’ve been watching years of Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club,” and he never said this. If he had, they would’ve tweeted about it.
But that didn’t stop plenty of high-profile Twitter accounts from sharing the news as if it was real, including journalist Julia Ioffe and actor Bradley Whitford. Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “Well, it didn’t take too long for the Christian Right to blame coronavirus on vaginas.”
As we mentioned before, it does sound like something Pat Robertson might say. Robertson started his career as a faith healer in the 1970s and 80s claiming he could cure disease, but he’s spent the past few decades largely bilking the elderly out of money through his TV network CBN—the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Previously, Robertson has blamed the mass shooting in Las Vegas on disrespect for President Trump, lamented the fact that he’s not allowed to endorse wife-beating anymore, and called the 2010 earthquake in Haiti a “blessing in disguise.” The estimated death toll of that earthquake was 230,000 people.
Robertson also agreed with the late hate-preacher Jerry Falwell during an episode of Robertson’s show shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks when Falwell said that gay people, the ACLU, and abortionists were to blame for the attacks on U.S. soil.
Falwell’s son now runs Liberty University, which has come under fire for bringing students back to class during the middle of a pandemic. At least a dozen students have reportedly shown symptoms of covid-19.
At least 337,646 covid-19 infections have been identified in the U.S., with 9,648 deaths, as of Monday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker. That’s roughly the equivalent of three 9/11 attacks. And it’s only expected to get worse in the days and weeks ahead. Even President Donald Trump says that this week is going to be hard.
“This will be probably the toughest week, between this week and the next week. And there will be a lot of death, unfortunately,” President Trump, who spent months minimising the coronavirus threat, said on Saturday.
No, Robertson didn’t say that thing about oral sex. But it’s easy to see why some people were fooled. Robertson is not a good guy, no matter how you slice it. And there’s still plenty of time for Robertson, a big supporter of Trump, to say something stupid about the pandemic.