Televangelist Pat Robertson says Biden won, won't be president long, urges 'erratic' Trump to retire

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/700 Club)

Televangelist Pat Robertson acknowledged on Monday's 700 Club that President-elect Joe Biden won, predicted "we'll be seeing a President Kamala Harris not too long after the inauguration of President Biden," and said it's time for President Trump to concede and retire from politics. Robertson, a leading voice of the religious right since the 1980s, has generally — though not always — backed Trump, along with most other prominent evangelical Christian leaders.

Trump is ramping up an increasingly fringy last-ditch effort to stay in office, but he's losing allies fast.

After conceding that Biden will take office and predicting he will either die or resign before too long, Robertson said "it would be a mistake" for Trump to run again in 2024. "My money would be on Nikki Haley," he added. "I think she'd make a tremendous candidate for the Republican Party." Robertson then offered a sober assessment of Trump.

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"You know, with all his talent and the ability to be able to raise money and grow large crowds, the president still lives in an alternate reality," Robertson said. "He really does. People say, 'Well, he lies about this, that, and the other.' But no, he isn't lying; to him, that's the truth." He said Trump has "done a marvelous job for the economy, but at the same time he is very erratic, and he's fired people and he's fought people and he's insulted people and he keeps going down the line." With Trump, "it's a mixed bag," Robertson said, "and I think it would be well to say, 'You've had your day and it's time to move on.'"

"Pat Robertson just proved that evolution exists, even in people who don't believe in evolution," comedian John Fugelsang quipped. But Trump can take a shred of comfort in the fact that Robertson's predictions haven't always — or even usually — borne out. In October, for example, he said God told him Trump would be re-elected, then an asteroid would hit the Earth.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.