Robertson claims to have been ‘misinterpreted’

August 24, 2005

I don’t mean to belabor this point, but as someone who’s combated Pat Robertson’s efforts for nearly 10 years, I’m having too much fun with this.

It appears that Robertson has finally come up with a response to the controversy surrounding his comments about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: we heard him wrong.

As Media Matters noted, on today’s episode of The 700 Club, Robertson spoke with former ambassador-at-large for the Republic of Venezuela and outspoken Chavez critic Thor Halvorssen about the Venezuelan government. Halvorssen began to do something incredibly unusual on The 700 Club — criticizing Robertson — before being “corrected.”

Halvorssen: Now, I think that it’s very important to also note your comments were about assassination. The person — I think that alternative is lowering to his level.

Robertson: Wait a minute, I didn’t say ‘assassination.’ I said our special forces should, quote, “take him out,” and “take him out” can be a number of things including kidnapping. There are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.

I realize he’s in a tough spot, but Robertson should know that lying so blatantly rarely makes a problem go away. Despite his claim today that he never used the word “assassination,” the video and transcript from Monday’s episode clearly shows otherwise.

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war…. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

In other words, Robertson broke one Commandment (bearing false witness) while advocating we break a different Commandment (against killing). If we add in the context that Robertson was coveting Venezuela’s oil, we’re looking at a Commandments-breaking Trifecta. Nice work, Pat.

Update: This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in an AP feed:

When the AP called Robertson on Tuesday for elaboration, spokeswoman Angell Watts said Robertson would not do interviews and had no statement about his remarks. On Wednesday, Watts did not respond to two telephone messages, three pages and a fax seeking further comment.

This guy is certainly a religous leader. The same kind that live in the middle east.

  • It’s really funny to me, I love to see this kind of exchange. Robertson says what he really believes and is caught red-handed, and then we have to listen to him try and backpeddle because we idiots out in TV land must
    have “mis-understood” him. The great thing is that the religious right keeps backing up and backing up….wonder what’s gonna happen when they back right into Osama who’s backing-up in the other direction….hee hee….radical is radical. You got your radical Islam, and your radical Christianity…..at the end of the day it’s all the same…..

  • Oh, well….he meant “kidnap”. That’s different. There is no commandment stating “Thou shall not kidnap”. Maybe we should give him a pass.
    Also, “take him out” could mean buy him dinner and a movie. That sounds reasonable to me. And friendly. And Christian. Buying him food and entertainment…well done Mr. Robertson!

    Mr. Bush, as you have done so often in the past with your loyal lackies, please give this man a promotion! How about appoint him as Secretary of Education and Lernin’?

  • In Robertson’s response to Halvorssen, he reffered to Chavez as a dictator!
    Wasnt he elected? Several times???

    Misunderstood my fuzzy ass…

    My name means orange in Italian

  • To borrow a phrase from Analytical Liberal:

    “Lying Fucking Bastards”

    Robertson is no different than the rest of the Rethugs.

  • Apparently lying on national tv doesn’t violate any of Robertson’s personal, ethical or religious convictions. Why would it? After all, this is coming from a man who has become a millionaire on the backs of grandmothers on a fixed income. But he’s also a entreprenuer who also sells his own miracle Pancake Mix. (Not a joke! Look here!)

    The man is nothing but a slimy snake oil peddler. If there is a hell satan has built Robertson a special mansion there, just waiting for him to move in.

  • He’s digging himself a deeper hole–either course is illegal as hell.

    I know, I know, I’m forgetting Noriega. But Noriega declared war on us–we have an out there.

  • This sort of “Who, Me?” tactic is classic Robertson. Two days after 9/11, when his friend Jerry Falwell was on the 700 Club blaming liberals, gays, feminists, etc. for the attacks, Robertson responded by saying, “I totally concur.” When it became clear that the public wouldn’t tolerate such finger pointing, Robertson claimed that, due to some technical glitch, he hadn’t actually heard what Falwell was saying.

    He also said that he’d been taken out of context, a claim that has replaced patriotism as the last refuge for the scoundrel.

  • While we’re on the subject of which commandments Rev. Robertson’s breaking:

    1. His God is political power and influence
    2. He venerates a graven image of the Ten Commandments
    3. He’s advocated murder
    4. A multimillionaire, he asks fixed income people to give him money even when they can’t afford it
    5. He’s lied about things he has said
    6. He’s covetous of Venezuela’s oil

    Let’s see, what’s left…
    Taking the Lord’s name in vain
    Honoring your parents
    Adultery
    Keeping the Sabbath holy

    And if you view it in the contest of Jesus’s two greatest commandments, he’s 0 for 2.

  • Too bad his comments were made on Monday instead of Sunday (they weren’t taped for showing on Monday, were they?). He could have violated 4 of the Commandments with this…

  • Don’t his statements break several Patriot Act provisions?

    If statements like his were coming out of the mouth of an Imam, he would be branded as a terrorist.

  • Gridlock, you nailed it. And thanks, everyone, for the laughs. If hypocrisy were a fatal disease, we’d have nothing to worry about. I think these guys are amazed when they get called on the carpet for this kind of thing. I mean, he didn’t suggest “taking out” a caucasian American, so what’s the big deal? Just some sleazy foreigner – surely God can’t have any quarrel with that!

    I honestly believe these reptiles (and many of their followers) truly believe that their god loves Americans more than he loves any other group of people, and white Americans are the most beloved of all. (Most have figured out that they can’t actually voice such an opinion, but in their twisted, ugly hearts, they believe it to be true.)

    It’s this mindset that is responsible for so much of what is wrong with this country, and, by extension, the world. There is a group of people who believe they are entitled to a better life than those who don’t look, think or behave the way they do. This belief breeds racism, intolerance, ignorance, hatred, greed, arrogance – pretty much all of the Seven Deadly Sins and then some. And now this group has taken control and seems determined to destroy everything good and decent in the world.

    Their sanctimonious righteousness makes me want to vomit on a daily basis. There’s a line in a Woody Allen movie – “if Jesus Christ were alive today and saw what was being done in His name He would never stop throwing up.” Never truer than now.

    How do they sleep at night?

  • In Robertson we see an example of how religious fundamentalism in the US is like the religious fundamentalism in the middle east: if you don’t like somebodies politics, then kill him. Once again conservatives are setting a dangerous precedent – one that makes us look more like the non-democratic extremist that Bush says he is leading a war against. These Christian Conservatives, of paramount importance to the Conservative political base, can be as extremist in their behavior as the jihadist extremist. It is amazing that a man of Christ would suggest murdering anybody. Replublicans are ruling by fear, and in doing so we are becoming a nation as ugly as our terrorist enemies. With political heavy weights like Robertson leading great masses of Americans, I have a hard time saying America is not at least part of the problem. I hope people start to see why it is so dangerous to mix religion and government too closely.

  • There needs to be an investigation into which laws this extremist broke with his comments. Are we not engaged in a struggle against extremism? Pat is a terrorist!

  • You know what’s so cool about this whole deal? Democrats, Liberals and people who can think clearly will be able to wave this little incident around in all kinds of situations; especially when some wingnut is screeching for a forced apology on the floor of the House of Representatives or Senate.

    When everybody was yelling at Dick Durbin to apologize for his remarks about torture, it pissed me off that he just didn’t say “Apologize? What for?”

    I could care less if Robertson makes amends or not. Though, the US might consider providing Secret Service protection to Chavez now, because if anything untoward happens now…

  • Pat Robertson is only saying aloud, I suspect, things that prominent members of the Bush Administration are probably actively working on.

    After all, we can’t have any world leaders determining the destinies of their own countries and people without our OK.

  • After thinking about it, if Bush is all that determined to get rid of Chavez, I prefer that he assassinate Chavez rather than go to war with Venezuela.

    If Bush had assassinated that brutal thug, Saddam, I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass. Remember, Bush said at the beginning of the war, he was only after Saddam. No Saddam, no war. I bet a lot of Sunnis about now wish they had offed Saddam.

    Back to South America – one of the rumored reasons for Rumsfeld’s visit to Peru and Paraguay (see 8/19/05 NYT) is to establish a US military base In Paraguay.

    From an April 1997 James A. Baker Insitute for Public Policy report on energy:

    “Moreover, as the US considers its future role as the protector of the free flow of oil from the Mideast and into Asia, it will have to address domestic constituencies that may not fully understand the global nature of oil economics and will as such, question US military policies in an environment where the imports entering the US may not in great measure be from the Mideast but rather from Venezuela, Mexico, Canada and Latin America.”

    Canada’s probably in big trouble for selling an interest in the Alberta tar sands to the Chinese.

  • People like Robertson are the reason I got a “Born Again Atheist” had a couple of weeks ago. If this is a Christian, I don’t want to have anything to do with them

  • Now that Uncle Sam has ripped off his mask to reveal Godzilla, Robertson conveniently forgets the bible story analogy — that of David & Goliath. That’s what we’ve created in Iraq, a shitload of “Davids” with IEDs as slingshots.

  • It seems telling that two prominent far Right leaders have told bold-faced lies over the passed week. Rush with the denial of his Sheehan comments, and now Robertson.

    To me it’s the natural result of a culture of lying within the Republican mindset. They continue to stack lies like a house of cards, starting with Iraq (perhaps even before that) and continue to test how much BS they can feed their constituency.

    When your used to your followers believing whatever you say, it seems easy to assume one lie is as casual (and acceptable) as the next.

  • Lies before Iraq?

    Could we start with “Two Texas Oilmen will protect America from higher gas prices.” ?????

    Yah, right.

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