NBC and other outlets are reporting the latest twist in the Jerry Falwell Jr. saga. He is now suing the university that he personally ran for dismissing him because of his own personal inappropriate behaviour …
Former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. filed a state lawsuit Wednesday against the evangelical school founded by his father, claiming he was wrongly ousted from his leadership post.
Falwell had led the school for 13 years before he resigned under pressure in late August amid a series of embarrassing scandals, culminating with him posting to Instagram a photo of himself on his yacht with a woman who was not his wife and with his pants unzipped.
The yacht photo was not his undoing. The revelation that did him in was the one involving the sexual antics that involved him, his wife, and a pool boy.
Why is Falwell important?
Historically, evangelicals were not really on board with Trump. Suddenly Falwell, as a leading evangelical, announces that he was endorsing Trump. That was the tipping point. Other evangelicals started to jump on the same bandwagon.
At the time it was all very strange. Trump, clearly not Christian, gets the Falwell endorsement and ignores Ted Cruz who really does believe and really is Christian. Cruz even launched his presidential bid at Falwell’s university.
Without the Falwell endorsement it is possible that Trump might not have won in 2016.
The link is Michael Cohen, the former fixer for U.S. President Donald Trump. Cohen’s book ties the 2016 presidential endorsement of Trump by American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr to Cohen’s own role in helping to keep racy “personal” photographs of the Falwells from becoming public.
Cohen has said that he helped persuade Falwell to endorse Trump just before Republican voters gathered in Iowa in February 2016 to nominate a presidential candidate. Falwell not only publicly vouched for Trump’s Christian virtues but also barnstormed with the candidate. His backing of Trump — a twice-divorced candidate who had talked about grabbing women’s genitals and engaged in extramarital affairs — was one of the major surprises of the 2016 campaign.
Let’s briefly remind ourselves of his “character”
I’ve written about Falwell before.
The man is a walking disaster.
- There have previously been photos of Becki Falwell. The Miami Herald reported on those, and, according to Politico, at least one showed her in a French-maid costume. Jerry sent the image to Liberty employees by accident and made a habit of discussing his sex life at work.
- A former university official told Politico about one particularly unfortunate car ride, during which … “all he wanted to talk about was how he would nail his wife, how she couldn’t handle [his penis size], and stuff of that sort.”
- Then let’s not forget the recent photos showing Falwell with his pants unzipped, arm around another woman, and a glass of what looks like beer in hand
- We should perhaps also not forget about his blatant racism.
There is much much more. For example targeting reporters who were doing their job, insulting a parent who questioned the school’s reopening, lying about the origin of coronavirus, giving a sweet land deal to his personal trainer, censoring the school’s own journalists, he publicly “liked” photos of younger women in not-so-Christian poses, etc…
Should we care?
Normally no.
What people consent to do together is nobody’s business but their own. This however is not about what he did, but rather is about the screaming hypocrisy of an individual whose entire career has been devoted to dictating to others a very strict set of religious rules.
Mind Blowing
What is truly mind blowing here is that he is now suing his own university for making him look bad.
Er … nope, no help needed, he managed that all by himself. They did not act, they reacted to what was revealed, and enforced the rules that Falwell himself had put in place and applied to everybody else in the university.
You would think that the smart play here is for him to simply keep his head down, then pop up in about six months or a year, declare that he has re-discovered Jesus and life would go on. Nope, this is Falwell; why shoot yourself in the foot, when you can go all out and blow your entire entire leg off.
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