Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster who turned a tiny Virginia station into the global Christian Broadcasting Network, tried a run for president and helped make religion central to Republican Party politics in America through his Christian Coalition, has died. He was 93. Robertson's death Thursday was announced by his broadcasting network. No cause was given. Robertson’s enterprises also included Regent University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia Beach; the American Center for Law and Justice, which defends the First Amendment rights of religious people; and Operation Blessing, an international humanitarian organization. But for more than a half-century, Robertson was a familiar presence in American living rooms, known for his “700 Club” television show, and in later years, his televised pronouncements of God’s judgment on America for everything from homosexuality to the teaching of evolution. The money poured in as he solicited donations, his influence soared, and when he moved directly into politics by seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 1988, he brought a huge following with him. Robertson pioneered a now-common strategy of courting Iowa’s network of evangelical Christian churches, and finished in second place in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of Vice President George H.W. Bush. At the time, Jeffrey K. Hadden, a University of Virginia sociologist and a Robertson biographer, said Robertson's masterstroke was insisting that three million followers across the U.S. sign petitions before he would decide to run. The tactic gave him an army. ″He asked people to pledge that they’d work for him, pray for him and give him money,” Hadden told The Associated Press in 1988. ″Political historians may view it as one of the most ingenious things a candidate ever did.″ Robertson later endorsed Bush, who won the presidency. Pursuit of Iowa’s evangelicals is now a ritual for Republican hopefuls, including those currently seeking the White House in 2024. Robertson started the Christian Coalition in Chesapeake in 1989, saying it would further his campaign’s ideals. The coalition became a major force in Republican politics in the 1990s, mobilizing conservative voters through grass-roots activities. By the time of his resignation as the coalition's president in 2001 — Robertson said he wanted to concentrate on ministerial work — his impact on both religion and politics in the U.S. was “enormous,” according to John C. Green, an emeritus political science professor at The University of Akron. Many followed the path Robertson cut in religious broadcasting, Green told the AP in 2021. In American politics, Robertson helped “cement the alliance between conservative Christians and the Republican Party.” Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson was born March 22, 1930, in Lexington, Virginia, to Absalom Willis Robertson and Gladys Churchill Robertson. His father served for 36 years as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from Virginia. After graduating from Washington and Lee University, he served as assistant adjutant of the 1st Marine Division in Korea. He received a law degree from Yale University Law School, but failed the bar exam and chose not to pursue a law career. Robertson met his wife, Adelia “Dede” Elmer, at Yale in 1952. He was a Southern Baptist, she was a Catholic, earning a master’s in nursing. Eighteen months later, they ran off to be married by a justice of the peace, knowing neither family would approve. Robertson was interested in politics until he found religion, Dede Robertson told the AP in 1987. He stunned her by pouring out their liquor, tearing a nude print off the wall and declaring he had found the Lord. They moved into a commune in New York City’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood because Robertson said God told him to sell all his possessions and minister to the poor. She was tempted to return home to Ohio, “but I realized that was not what the Lord would have me do ... I had promised to stay, so I did,” she told the AP. Robertson received a master’s in divinity from New York Theological Seminary in 1959, then drove south with his family to buy a bankrupt UHF television station in Portsmouth, Va. He said he had just $70 in his pocket, but soon found investors, and CBN went on the air on Oct. 1, 1961. Established as a tax-exempt religious nonprofit, CBN brought in hundreds of millions, disclosing $321 million in “ministry support” in 2022 alone. One of Robertson’s innovations was to use the secular talk-show format on the network’s flagship show, the “700 Club,” which grew out of a telethon when Robertson asked 700 viewers for monthly $10 contributions. It was more suited to television than traditional revival meetings or church services, and gained a huge audience. “Here’s a well-educated person having sophisticated conversations with a wide variety of guests on a wide variety of topics,” said Green, the University of Akron political science professor. “It was with a religious inflection to be sure. But it was an approach that took up everyday concerns.” His guests eventually included several U.S. presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. At times, his on-air pronouncements drew criticism. He claimed that the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001 were caused by God, angered by the federal courts, pornography, abortion rights and church-state separation. Talking again about 9-11 on his TV show a year later, Robertson described Islam as a violent religion that wants to “dominate” and “destroy,” prompting President George W. Bush to distance himself and say Islam is a peaceful and respectful religion. He called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005. Later that year, he warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town not to be surprised if disaster struck them because they voted out school board members who favored teaching “intelligent design” over evolution. And in 1998, he said Orlando, Florida, should beware of hurricanes after allowing the annual Gay Days event. In 2014, he angered Kenyans when he warned that towels in Kenya could transmit AIDS. CBN issued a correction, saying Robertson “misspoke about the possibility of getting AIDS through towels.” Robertson also could be unpredictable: In 2010, he called for ending mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession convictions. Two years later, he said on the “700 Club” that marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government’s war on drugs had failed. Robertson condemned Democrats caught up in sex scandals, saying for example that President Bill Clinton turned the White House into a playpen for sexual freedom. But he helped solidify evangelical support for Donald Trump, dismissing the candidate's sexually predatory comments about women as an attempt “to look like he’s macho.” After Trump took office, Robertson interviewed the president at the White House. And CBN welcomed Trump advisers, such as Kellyanne Conway, as guests. But after President Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, Robertson said Trump was living in an “alternate reality” and should “move on,” news outlets reported. Robertson’s son, Gordon, succeeded him in December 2007 as chief executive of CBN, which is now based in Virginia Beach. Robertson remained chairman of the network and continued to appear on the “700 Club.” Robertson stepped down as host of the show after half a century in 2021, with his son Gordon taking over the weekday show. Robertson also was founder and chairman of International Family Entertainment Inc., parent of The Family Channel basic cable TV network. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought IFE in 1997. Regent University, where classes began in Virginia Beach in 1978, now has more than 30,000 alumni, CBN said in a statement. Robertson wrote 15 books, including “The Turning Tide” and “The New World Order.” His wife Dede, who was a founding board member of CBN, died last year at the age of 94. The couple had four children, 14 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, CBN said in a statement. ____ Former Associated Press reporter Don Schanche contributed to this story.

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The man replacing a coveted prime-time cable television slot once occupied by right-wing figurehead Tucker Carlson is a longtime Fox News presence who honed his reputation on the network with brash man-on-the-street interviews and derisive commentary attacking Democratic officials and his liberal rivals. Jesse Watters has been with the network for more than two decades, wearing the influence of a generation of Fox News stars and right-wing radio figures that preceded him. The changeup follows Carlson’s departure from the network in the aftermath of a pair of lawsuits and a $787.5m settlement reached with a voting machine company that sued Fox and its leadership for defamation. A rotating lineup of hosts filled the 8pm hour in the weeks that followed. Watters – who helmed the previous hour – will permanently fill that later slot in the network’s schedule with his Jesse Watters Primetime. “Unlike Carlson, he lacks a well-defined ideological agenda, apart from looking for ways to ‘own the libs’ on whatever the news of the day is,” according to MSNBC columnist Paul Waldman. “There may be plenty of Fox viewers who will happily tune in to that for an hour each night. But Watters is effectively an internet troll who happens to be on TV,” he wrote. “If you want a detailed breakdown of the latest right-wing obsession, he’s not the one you’d seek out; if on the other hand you merely want someone to smirk while delivering a zinger about Hunter Biden, Watters is your man.” Like Carlson, Watters comes from a prominent media family and is a product of exclusive East Coast private schooling. But unlike Carlson, who arrived at Fox after on-air roles at competing networks MSNBC and CNN, Watters is something of a Fox company man, moving up in the ranks over more than 20 years while adopting the hostile posture and talking points of some of its biggest stars, with a self-satisfied grin. Watters ascribes his political awakening to watching Republican members of Congress on C-SPAN. From there, he devoutly listened to right-wing radio and pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, whose influence is seared into his provocative personality. By 2011, Watters helmed his own recurring segment on Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor. His “Watters World” reports would rely on man-on-the-street interviews, quick edits and frequent cutaways to movie clips to ridicule frequent right-wing targets, from college campus culture to people experiencing homelessness. Those reports and his other statements on the network over the years have drawn widespread criticism and accusations of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and election denialism, including incendiary statements aired days before the attack on the US Capitol. In one of his segments in 2015, Watters interviewed homeless New Yorkers at Penn Station to accuse them of breaking the law. He would go on to declare homeless people an “invasive species” on his own programme in 2022. A 2016 “Watters World” segment from Manhattan’s Chinatown was widely derided as a racist and stereotype-driven production that prompted a rare response from Watters. “My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense,” he said. That same year, it was revealed that he was accused of stalking and harassing journalist Amanda Terkel seven years earlier, an incident that led to an altercation between Watters and another journalist at an afterparty following a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. “I was at this party trying to enjoy myself. This guy came up to me. He starts putting it in my face,” Watters later said. “I was friendly at first, and then he started getting a little obnoxious. Things happened, and I regret it happened, and that’s all it is.” On The Five, the network’s roundtable talk show on which Watters has been a longtime co-host, he claimed without evidence in 2019 that women reporters sleep with sources “all the time” in an apparent reference to the portrayal of a journalist in the film Richard Jewell. In 2021, Watters encouraged the audience at a conservative political conference to “ambush” Dr Anthony Fauci and deliver a figurative “kill shot” against the nation’s leading infectious disease expert. Fauci, then the chief White House medical adviser, called on Fox to fire Watters. The network defended him in a statement and promoted him a few weeks later. He also has repeatedly defended Mr Trump, including a warning that “people better be careful” and that “the left” doesn’t “understand what they’re getting themselves into” following news of the former president’s criminal indictment in New York City. The Independent requested comment from Fox regarding Watters’ statements. A spokesperson for the network provided a network statement announcing the lineup changes. “FOX News Channel has been America’s destination for news and analysis for more than 21 years and we are thrilled to debut a new lineup. The unique perspectives of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld will ensure our viewers have access to unrivaled coverage from our best-in-class team for years to come,” Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in the statement. Right-wing media watchdog group Media Matters has chronicled Watters’ controversial on-air statements throughout his time at the network. “Crowning odious Jesse Watters as the new face of Fox News is a reflection of Fox’s dogged commitment to bigotry and deceit as well as an indication of their desperation to regain audience share,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement. “It won’t work, though. Fox’s audience abandoned the network post-Tucker, and those viewers never returned,” he added. “Jesse Watters’ buffoonish segments of bigotry and culture war vitriol won’t fix that problem for Fox; he’s a liability and a ticking time bomb. 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