March 27, 2017
'The GOP Will Pass Healthcare Friday' and Other Fortune Telling Failures by Pat Robertson
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
While Republicans continue to lick their collective wounds after Friday's failure of their long-promised repeal and replace of Obamacare, televangelist Pat Robertson may want to have a few minutes of his "700 Club" video archives conveniently "disappear."
On Thursday, as Republicans were scrambling for votes within their own party to get the American Health Care Act to pass, televangelist Pat Robertson was already planning a victory party.
"It's going to go through the Senate, and we're all going to rejoice that we're going to pay less on health care," Robertson told viewers on Thursday.
The GOP replacement for Obamacare seemed almost dead on arrival with arch conservative members of Congress angry that it was too generous and moderate representatives concerned that it would result in millions of their constituents losing coverage.
Still, according to Robertson, "the Lord was going to give Trump [a] victory."
"They're going to get it," he said. "They're going to give it to the president. Mark my word: it will pass. They will get those extra votes. It will go through. They're going to work together to give us tremendous health care."
Robertson has been riding high on his skills of prognostication ever since Trump won the presidency as he predicted. But history has shown more than a few massive failures in his ability to foretell the future.
Take a trip down Pat Robertson's fortune telling failure memory lane thanks to Daylight Atheism.
In 1980, Robertson predicted the start of World War III, telling his audience that God said the year would be full of "sorrow and bloodshed that will have no end soon, for the world is being torn apart, and my kingdom shall rise from the ruins of it." He also prophecised in the same year that the Soviet Union would invade the Middle East to seize its oil reserves.
In 1988, Robertson claimed that God told him to run for president. He did not win the Republican primary.
In 1998, Robertson threatened that, as punishment for flying rainbow flags during Disney World's annual Gay Days event, the city of Orlando would be struck by "earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor".
Robertson also predicted in 2006 that devastating storms and hurricanes would lash the U.S. coast. He must have thought this a particularly safe guess, but, in fact, no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. in that year.
H/T Right Wing Watch