President Trump praised televangelist Jimmy Swaggart for his religious faith and patriotism, after the 90-year-old scandal-plagued Pentecostal preacher died Tuesday.
“He was an incredible Man of Faith and, as our Nation’s longest serving Televangelist, inspired millions with his Great Love of God and Country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Jimmy will be deeply missed!”
Swaggart, a Louisiana native, grew his ministry to a multi-million dollar enterprise through popular televised ministries in the 1980s, but he was caught with prostitutes multiple times — forcing him to make tearful public apologies.
His death was announced on social media Tuesday evening, following a heart attack last month.
“My dad was a warrior; my dad was preacher,” his son, Donnie Swaggart said in a video posted on Facebook. “He didn’t want to be anything else except a preacher of the gospel.”
“That’s what he was put on this earth to do,” he added.
Swaggart grew a media empire through his outspoken, and often controversial, religious views — such as a dismissive attitude toward Catholics and Jewish people. His theatrical televised sermons often included worshippers’ dramatic responses to, as they claimed, being filled by the Holy Spirit.
Swaggart was caught in multiple prostitution scandals in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He gave a tearful televised sermon from his Baton Rouge, La.-based Family Worship Center in 1988 to apologize.
“To the hundreds of millions that I have stood before in over a hundred countries of the world, and I’ve looked into the cameras and so many of you with a heart of loneliness, needing help, have reached out to the minister of the gospel as a beacon of light,” he said. “I have sinned against you; I beg you to forgive me.”
In a 2021 broadcast, the tele-preacher discussed receiving a phone call from Trump in which the then-former president said he had watched Swaggart’s sermons “for many years.”
“[Trump] was telling me how that he was blessed by the service Sunday,” Swaggart said in June 2021, about six months after Trump left the White House following his 2020 reelection loss to former President Biden.
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