On FOX, Pat Robertson said of 2004 election: "George Bush has the favor of heaven"; "God has honored him"

On FOX News Channel, Reverend Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, claimed that President George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election because God preferred Bush over Senator John Kerry.

On the November 4 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, when co-host Alan Colmes asked Robertson if Bush was "God's choice for president," Robertson declared that Bush "has the favor of heaven" and that "God has honored him." When Colmes asked if that meant that former President Bill Clinton was also chosen by God, Robertson replied: "I think He [God] wanted to bring America to its knees so we'd start praying harder."

Earlier in the program, Robertson claimed he "misspoke" when he said, on the October 19 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now, that Bush told him "we're not going to have any casualties" in Iraq.

From the November 4 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

COLMES: There was a story that said you talked to President Bush and you warned him about casualties in Iraq and he said, "There are not going to be any casualties." Is that accurate that he said that to you?

ROBERTSON: No. The truth was I misspoke. What he basically said is our troops are so well equipped and so powerful that casualties would be at a minimum. I misspoke, and of course it was blown all over the country.

You know, I got -- I got a little relaxed. I did 22 interviews that day, and that was the last one. You know how it goes.

[...]

COLMES: Is George W. Bush God's choice for president?

ROBERTSON: I think, you know, I said it on another show, and I'll say it again. The Chinese emperor used to say, does he have the favor of heaven, and I think George Bush has the favor of heaven.

He's a godly man. He prays on a daily basis. He wants to do what's right before the Lord, and I think God has honored him. And I think this second victory --

COLMES: When you say he's got the favor of heaven, are you implying that that -- he is God's choice and that God preferred him over John Kerry?

ROBERTSON: Obviously, if you think the Lord rules in the affairs of men, he did because he sure won. He had 3.5 million more votes.

I said this about a year ago, in -- as you remember in January, it was quoted by the A[ssociated] P[ress] -- that I felt the Lord had told me he was going to win substantially. I got, you know, ridiculed on 60 Minutes, me and Mel Gibson. I think Mel Gibson came out pretty well, and my prediction came out pretty well.

COLMES: Doesn't that mean at one time --

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): Pat -- Pat --

COLMES: -- Doesn't that mean that at one time, Pat, Bill Clinton was God's choice for president?

HANNITY: No, he just allowed -- allowed that to happen.

COLMES: Let me ask Pat.

HANNITY: We're out of time.

ROBERTSON: I think -- I think He [God] wanted to bring America to its knees so we'd start praying harder.

Robertson's claim that he "misspoke" when he said that Bush told him "we're not going to have any casualties" in Iraq is not the first time Robertson has used a Hannity & Colmes appearance to backtrack from a controversial claim. On the February 8, 2002, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Colmes asked him about his on-air endorsement of Reverend Jerry Falwell's remark blaming "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians ... the ACLU, [and] People For the American Way" for the September 11 terrorist attacks. (Falwell made the remark on Robertson's TV program, The 700 Club, on September 13, 2001.) Robertson replied: "I thought it was totally inappropriate at the time, and -- I was watching a monitor. I'm on a monitor there with you, and he was on a monitor with me, and I, frankly, wasn't paying as much -- as close attention, until I read the transcript later on, to what he said, and we both repudiated those remarks."

—A.S.