Pat Robertson died today.  

Donald Trump was indicted on 7 counts today.  

The two events are probably more related than you might realize.  

I don’t mean that the two events are related in some conspiratorial way, such as the unhinged pseudo-political fantasies that commonly rise from alt-rightwing fever swamps. But even on that note, I’d lay money that there’s a more than fair amount of overlap between Robertson and Trump audiences. And yes – today is no doubt a sad day in the bizarro world of white Christian nationalists. And that’s really the hint you need to understand how today’s Robertson and Trump events connect. Few people in America’s modern history played as integral of a role in the Republican politics that culminated in the election of Donald Trump as did the old guard televangelist and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson.  

Before there were Trump-admiring Q-Anon nuts and sycophantic election-deniers, the religious right that supported Trump in such staggering numbers had already been conditioned to believe absurdities for decades by snake-oil peddling charlatans like Pat Robertson. Robertson and others of his ilk would take to the pulpits and airways to blame all sorts of natural disasters and extreme weather events on everything from a “gay agenda” to legal abortion – that we are all sinners in the hands of an angry god who is warning us that we are provoking his wrath. Literally millions of our fellow Americans believe this and similar bunk – enough to make Pat Robertson a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1980s, and enough that they succeeded in putting the Trump/Pence ticket in the White House in 2016.  

The death of Pat Robertson marks a significant point in an era, but not the end. Robertson was a prototype – a forerunner to the false prophets who grab the biggest headlines today. Unfortunately, the legacy of Pat Robertson is being carried on and looks to continue carrying on into the foreseeable future by hatemongers and wackos like Kenneth Copeland, Greg Locke, and a rabble of conmen like them.  

The federal indictment of Donald Trump marks its own significant point in an era, but it too is likely not the end of one. Unfortunately for ‘We The People,’ Donald Trump’s politics seems to have given America a certain permission to embrace the worst demons of our nature. From Charlottesville, Virginia on a hot August afternoon in 2017 to a cold January day in D.C. in 2021, the fruits of Trump’s influence in American politics have wounded and scarred our country in ways many of us took for granted wouldn’t happen again. But the recent emergence of such exceptionally sleazy politicians as George Santos and Kari Lake bodes ominous over our future. And the contagion seems to not have been quarantined to the GOP in our politics – as the infamous anti-vaccine conspiracy loon Robert F. Kennedy has recently gained some juice in left-wing politics and even launched his own presidential run for office. In our current era of American politics, baptized into Trump-ism, even the national Libertarian Party fell to a conspiracy-overdosed right-wing authoritarian takeover in 2022.  

Today, one disgusting hate preacher died and another was served notice of imminent accountability. One was a root and the other the fruit of the same twisted tree of deceit, loathing, and misery – of conspiracy, corruption, and division; and the blight has sadly spread to the larger forest. We may be rid of a rotten root, and finally snatching up a shriveling fruit – but we’re not out of the woods yet.  

Keep your axe sharp, and watch which way the wind blows the branches.  

Kru Adam G. ‘Brick’ House
is a retired US Army Airborne combat veteran. He is currently a Pre-Law Major earning a BS and serves as the Founder, President, and Chief Instructor for Blue Raider Muay Thai at Middle Tennessee State University. House is also known as an author of a self-published book on PTSD recovery, and a drummer who has played with multiple metal bands in the Nashville music scene and beyond.