I want you to close your eyes for a second. Okay,
well, keep them open if you're driving, but use
your imagination. I want to transport you back
to a very specific moment in the American experiment.
It's the mid -1980s. The economy is booming,
shoulder pads are huge, and greed is. Well, maybe
not good, like Gordon Gekko said, but it's certainly
popular. Now, I want you to zoom in on Fort Mill,
South Carolina. I think I know exactly where
we're going. I can almost smell the chlorine
already. You should be. You're standing in the
middle of a theme park. It's loud. It's sunny.
And there is absolutely the smell of chlorine
and like waffle cones in the air. Yeah. Families
are screaming with joy. They're sliding down
these huge fiberglass water flumes into these
sparkling blue pools. But this. This isn't Disney.
Yeah. And it isn't Six Flags. This is Heritage
USA. Which, and I think people really forget
this part, was the third most successful theme
park in the United States at the time. That's
the crazy part. It was trailing only the two
Disneys. That's it. Exactly. And running this
whole empire is a man who isn't just a CEO. He's
a spiritual icon. He's a man who looked right
into the camera and told millions of people that
God didn't just want them to be good. He wanted
them to be rich. Jim Backer. And then I want
you to just swipe that image away. Totally delete
it. Replace the water park with a gray barred
room in Rochester, Minnesota. The year is roughly
1990. Okay. Big shift. Huge shift. Suit is gone.
The hair is different. And this man, Jim Backer,
is sitting on a bunk. And he's looking at his
roommate. And his roommate is not a pastor. It's
not a choir director. It is the political extremist
and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. It is.
And this is not an exaggeration. It's arguably
the strangest odd couple situation in modern
American history. Right. You have the fallen
televangelist, the king of prosperity gospel,
and the man who, among other things, thought...
Queen of England was a high -level drug dealer.
Just sharing a cell. Just sharing a cell, talking
about who knows what, you know, the breakfast
menu. That is a fall from grace that is so steep
it almost gives you vertigo. But when we started
pulling the source material for this deep dive,
the court documents, the biographies, the old
broadcast transcripts, I realized that the rise
and fall narrative is actually, it's too simple.
It's missing the third act. Right. Because the
story doesn't end in that prison cell. And that's
the part that really hooked me when we were prepping
this. It's the reinvention. No, it doesn't. This
is a story about a man who, you could argue,
invented modern religious broadcasting, burned
it all to the ground, went to prison for fraud,
and then somehow came back. But he didn't come
back as the same guy. He reinvented himself to
match the nightmares of a whole new generation.
It's really a masterclass in adaptation when
you look at it that way. I mean, we're going
to look at how you go from selling the prosperity
gospel, the idea that, you know, Jesus wants
you to drive a Mercedes, to the apocalypse gospel,
where Jesus wants you to buy a giant bucket of
freeze -dried beans because the world is definitely
ending next Tuesday. So our mission today is
to decode the mechanism. How did he build the
empire in the first place? How exactly did the
fraud work that took him down? And then how did
he survive that total collapse to start all over
again? And honestly, the how is just as fascinating
as the what. It's a story by the intersection
of faith and finance and the mechanics of mass
media. It's so uniquely American. Let's start
at the beginning because I think people see the
caricature, you know, the crying on TV, the makeup,
and they assume he was always this sort of this
cartoon character. Yeah, the late 80s version
is what's burned into everyone's memory. Exactly.
But you don't build a global empire by being
a cartoon. No, you don't. You do it by being
an innovator. And to understand Jim Backer, you
have to go back to 1940. He was born in Muskegon,
Michigan. Very humble beginnings. But the path
to stardom, it really starts in 1960. He's attending
North Central University in Minneapolis. A Bible
college. Right, a Bible college affiliated with
the Assemblies of God. And this is where he meets
her, the other half of the power couple, the
one who would define the brand with him. This
is where he meets Tammy Faye LaVallee. They were
both students. The story goes that Jim was working
at a restaurant in a department store, and Tammy
was working at a little boutique nearby. And
the source material says the spark was pretty
much instantaneous. So it was love at first sight.
It really seems so, which was complicated. Apparently
Jim already had a fiancée back home in Muskegon.
Ooh, a little bit of drama from the start. A
little bit, but he began courting Tammy Faye
immediately. They were just young kids totally
in love. In fact, they moved so fast that they
dropped out of college to get married. And the
wedding date was April 1st, 1961. April Fool's
Day. You literally can't write that. You really
can't. If you put that in a movie script, the
studio would reject it for being too on the nose.
That's too much. But they made a decision that
would define the rest of their lives. They dropped
out. They left college to become itinerant evangelists.
Which, in the early 60s, that's a hard life,
right? That's not private jets and mansions.
That's driving from town to town in a beat -up
car. Oh yeah, it's the van life version of ministry,
but without the Instagram filters and sponsorships.
Right. They were driving town to town, hoping
a church lets you speak, maybe passing a hat.
They eventually had two children, Tammy Sue and
Jamie Charles, who goes by Jay. But here is the
key insight that separates them from every other
traveling preacher in, say, 1962. They realized
that just getting up and preaching wasn't enough.
They needed a hook. A gimmick. They needed a
hook. They needed to be entertainers. And this
is the part of the story that always surprises
people who only know the later scandals. Their
big break didn't come from fire and brunestone
sermons. It came from puppets. Puppets? Like
sock puppets on their hands? A little more sophisticated
than that. Professional comic routines with puppets.
They created characters. They did skits. And
this was, believe it or not, revolutionary at
the time because it made religion... approachable
for kids and families in a way that, you know,
a stern man in a dark suit yelling from a pulpit
never could. It's bitter theater for the church
crowd. It's fun. It's fun. It's accessible. And
this puppet act actually gets them their big
break. Okay, so where do they go? In 1966, they
joined Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting
Network, CBN. Now, you have to understand the
scale here. Today, CBN is this massive global
entity. In 1966, the sources say they had an
audience in the low thousands. So basically public
access television level. Pretty much. And Jim
and Tammy Faye hosted a children's variety show.
It was called Come On Over. And it was a hit.
It was funny. It was engaging. And it used the
medium of television. In a way, religious broadcasting
just hadn't really done before. It wasn't just
a camera pointed at a pulpit. So they were pioneers
of the format. They were figuring out how to
translate the experience of church into the language
of television. Absolutely. They understood that
TV is a cool medium. It's intimate. You're in
someone's living room. You can't just shout.
You have to connect. And it works so well that
it gets Baker promoted. Right. It does. In fact,
because the puppet show was so successful, Pat
Robertson actually made Baker the host of a new
primetime talk show. Maybe you've heard of it.
The 700 Club. Wait, really? Jim Baker was the
original host of The 700 Club. Always, always
associate that with Pat Robertson. Baker helped
build it into CBN's flagship program. He was
the architect of the format, the couch, the chatty
style, the celebrity guests, the whole Christian
Tonight Show vibe. Wow. He realized that if you
want to be in people's living rooms every single
night, you can't just preach at them. You have
to hang out with them. That is a crucial distinction.
It shifts the relationship from authority congregant
to like a friend. The parasocial relationship.
Exactly. And that parasocial relationship is
what monetizes so, so well later on. But Baker
doesn't stay at CBN. He seems to be a builder,
but he's also restless. In 1973, he and Tammy
Faye leave. Where to next? They move to California.
And they partner with Paul and Jan Crouch to
co -found the Trinity Broadcasting Network, TBN.
Which is the other giant in the industry. He's
like the Forrest Gump of Christian TV. He's there
for the founding of everything important. He
is. He builds the Coca -Cola and the Pepsi of
televangelism back to back. It's an incredible
run. So why didn't that stick? The TBN partnership
was really short -lived. It only lasted about
eight months. The sources just describe a falling
out between Jim and Paul Crouch. There were clearly
some personality clashes there. So Jim and Tammy
Faye pack up again. They move to Charlotte, North
Carolina. And in 1974, they decide, we're done
building networks for other people. We're going
to build our own. And PTL was born. PTL, praise
the Lord. They launched the PTL Club in its late
-night talk show format in 1975. And they founded
the PTL Satellite Network. They were buying time,
airing programs through local affiliates all
across the U .S. And this is where the ambition
just really starts to scale up because they didn't
just stay in the studio this time. They started
building a physical kingdom. Heritage USA. This
is absolutely crucial to understanding the Baker
phenomenon. They weren't just a TV show anymore.
They bought a huge tract of land in Fort Mill,
South Carolina, right on the border with North
Carolina. And they built a headquarters called
Heritage Village. But it just kept expanding
and expanded into a massive, sprawling theme
park and resort. I looked up some photos of this
place from back in the day. I mean, it looks
incredible. There's a replica of the upper room
in Jerusalem, huge hotels, the water park. It
wasn't just a church camp. It was a genuine destination
resort. It was the third most successful theme
park in the U .S. at the time. As we said, only
Disney World and Disneyland had more visitors.
And the money. The money coming in was just astronomical.
How much are we talking, really? By the peak,
viewer contributions were estimated to exceed
$1 million a week. A million a week. In the late
70s and early 80s dollars. Yes. That is purchasing
power. That is hard to even wrap your head around.
It's not just ministry money. That's empire money.
It is. And this brings us to the theology that
drove it all. At this time, Baker was one of
the most visible, most devout proponents of prosperity
theology. Okay, let's define that for the listeners.
What is prosperity theology exactly? Because
it sounds like a very specific American invention.
It absolutely is. At its core, it's the belief
that financial blessing and physical well -being
are the will of God for Christians and that faith...
positive speech, and donations to religious causes
will increase one's own material wealth. So if
you're a good Christian and you give money to
the church, God will make you rich. In a nutshell,
yes. Baker was very explicit about this. He wasn't
subtle. In his 1980 book, Eight Keys to Success,
he wrote, quote, God wants you to be happy. God
wants you to be rich. God wants you to prosper.
He wasn't hiding it. He wasn't saying be rich
in spirit. He meant cash. He meant real estate.
He meant cash. He had a famous quote. I believe
that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on
TV. He saw mass media and wealth as tools for
the gospel. But as you can imagine, when you
have a million dollars a week flowing in through
a nonprofit organization. People start asking
questions. Especially the government. Right.
There were early warning signs. As early as 1979,
the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, started
an investigation into PTL. They were looking
into allegations that funds raised on air were
being misused. Misused how? Like, was it just
lavish spending or something more specific? It
was very specific. The FCC report, which was
finalized in 1982, found that Baker had gone
on air and raised $350 ,000 telling viewers it
would go to overseas missions. Okay, to help
people in other countries. Right. But instead,
that money was used to pay for part of Heritage
USA. So it was give money for starving children,
but actually it was we're buying concrete for
the water slide. Essentially, yes. The report
also found that the Bakers were using PTL funds
for personal expenses. But... And here's a fascinating
legal and political twist. The FCC commissioners
voted four to three to drop the investigation.
They dropped it. After finding all that, why
did they not have enough evidence? It was a very
clever move on Baker's part. They allowed him
to sell the only TV station he personally owned,
a station in Ohio. By doing that, he was no longer
technically a broadcaster in the eyes of the
FCC. He was just a content producer? He was just
a content producer buying time on other people's
stations, so he just... Stepped out of their
jurisdiction. That is some 4D chess right there.
That is a sleek move. And he spun it masterfully.
He went on air, called the investigation a witch
hunt by secular forces and asked viewers to give
the devil a black eye by donating even more money.
And they did. Unbelievable. The Department of
Justice also declined to prosecute, citing insufficient
evidence. He must have felt completely untouchable.
But. The IRS isn't as easy to shake as the SEC,
right? Their jurisdiction is just money. No,
they're not. In 1985, a confidential IRS report
was completed. It found that between 1980 and
1983, $1 .3 million in ministry funds had been
used for the baker's personal benefit. A million
three. For personal stuff, what are we talking
about? Fur coats, cars, houses. All of it. The
lifestyle was famously lavish. Gold -plated bathroom
fixtures, Rolls Royces, multiple homes, even
an air -conditioned doghouse. The works. An air
-conditioned doghouse? Yes. And the IRS report
recommended stripping PTL of its tax -exempt
status. So why didn't it happen right then? Well...
No action was taken immediately. And there's
a note in the source material from The Washington
Post which speculates that politics might have
played a role. It was the Reagan administration
and they weren't exactly eager to go after high
profile televangelists. Their followers were
a huge part of the new conservative political
base. A key part of the coalition. So the IRS
report just sort of sat there. So he's got the
money. He's got the political cover. He's got
the third most popular theme park in America.
He feels completely untouchable. But usually
in these stories, when you feel untouchable is
exactly when you make the fatal mistake. And
the mistake involved the three things that always,
always bring down empires. Sex, money and a cover
up. Let's talk about the Jessica Hahn scandal.
This was the pin that popped the balloon. And
it's important to walk through what actually
happened, according to the records, because the
event itself happened years before it became
public. Okay. The incident itself took place
in 1980 in a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida.
Baker acknowledged having a sexual encounter
with a church secretary named Jessica Hahn. And
the details here are heavily disputed, right?
Very much so. Baker denied it was rape. claiming
it was consensual. Hahn, on the other hand, alleged
that she was drugged and raped by Baker and another
man, a former PTL Club co -host named John Wesley
Fletcher. Right. But from a legal and organizational
standpoint, the crime isn't necessarily the sex.
It's the money used to hide the sex. It's always
the cover up. Exactly. A payoff of $279 ,000
was made to Hahn to buy her silence. That is
a very specific number. It is. And crucially,
where did that money come from? It came from
PTL funds. It was funneled through an associate,
a contractor named Roe Messner, to hide the trail.
So, donor money people's retirement savings,
widow's mites, was used as hush money for a sexual
encounter. That is exactly what the investigation
found. And at the same time, Baker was also facing
allegations of maintaining two sets of books
to conceal these kinds of accounting irregularities.
When the Charlotte Observer, which had been doing
incredible investigative work on this for years,
led by a reporter named Charles Shepard, started
getting close to breaking the Hans story, the
pressure just became too much. The walls were
closing in. They were. On March 19th, 1987, Jim
Baker resigned from PTL. But he didn't just walk
away, did he? He tried to hand the keys to someone
he thought he could trust. And this is where
the story just turns into a Shakespearean tragedy.
Or maybe a daytime soap opera. It really does.
It becomes this incredible power struggle. Baker
was terrified. He wasn't just worried about the
press. He was worried about a hostile takeover
from a rival televangelist. Who was he worried
about? Jimmy Swaggart. Jimmy Swaggart. The great
balls of fire. Cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis. The
very same. A huge star in his own right. Swagger
had initiated an internal Assemblies of God investigation
into Baker's misconduct. Baker was convinced
Swagger wanted to seize the PTL empire for himself.
A corporate raid, but with ministries. Exactly.
So in a panic, Baker appointed Jerry Falwell
as his successor. Jerry Falwell, the founder
of the moral majority, another titan of the religious
right. Baker thought Falwell would be a caretaker.
That was the word he used. He thought, OK, I'll
step aside for a bit, let the heat die down,
and my friend Jerry will hold the fort and then
give the ministry back to me. And did Jerry give
it back? Not even close. Falwell took over, looked
at the books, saw the depth of the scandal. And
in April 1987, he publicly barred Baker from
ever returning to PTL. He locked the doors and
changed the locks. He locked the doors and then
went on national television and threw away the
key. Falwell called Baker a liar, an embezzler
and a sexual deviant. He even said, and this
is a direct quote, that Baker was the greatest
scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in
2000 years of church history. Wow. 2 ,000 years.
That is not professional courtesy. That is a
scorched earth policy. It was an all -out war.
Falwell tried to save the park. He even famously
went down a water slide in a full suit and tie
to try and raise money. I remember seeing that
footage. But the debt and the scandal were just
too deep. Donations plummeted. Falwell and the
new board resigned in October 1987. PTL was bankrupt.
The empire was gone. And just to put a final
ironic button on this whole saga. Yeah. What
happened to Jimmy Swigert? The guy who started
the whole thing by calling Baker a cancer in
the body of Christ. In February 1988, less than
a year later, Jimmy Swaggart was caught in his
own sex scandal involving visiting prostitutes
in New Orleans, leading to his own tearful televised
confession. You literally cannot make this stuff
up. It's like the writer's room for reality was
just working overtime in the late 80s. It completely
shattered public trust in televangelism for a
generation. But for Baker, the humiliation was
just the beginning. Because now with the ministry
ban— bankrupt, and his reputation destroyed,
the federal government was finally ready to move.
Right, because the hush money was bad. But the
real crime, the thing that sends you to prison
for decades, was the business model itself. Yes,
the lifetime partnerships. Okay, explain this
scheme, because it was the core of the criminal
case, but it sounds kind of complicated. It sounds
complicated, but the math is actually quite simple
and devastating. Between 1984 and 1987, as the
financial pressure on PTL was mounting, Baker
started aggressively selling these partnerships.
They cost $1 ,000 each. And what did you get
for your thousand bucks? What was the promise?
The promise was that if you bought one, you and
your family were entitled to an annual three
-night stay for life at a luxury hotel at Heritage
USA. Which sounds a lot like a timeshare, basically.
It is, in theory, a religious timeshare. But
here's the fraud. They sold tens of thousands
of these memberships, but they only ever finished
building one 500 -room hotel at the Heritage
Grand. Oh, I see where this is going. So if everyone
shows up for their three nights... There is nowhere
to put them. The prosecution at the trial proved
that the partnerships sold far, far exceeded
the capacity. They had sold enough partnerships
to fill the hotel for something like 30 years
straight if everyone tried to book their stay.
Wow. And worse, the money wasn't even being used
for construction. More than twice the amount
needed to build the promised hotels was raised.
So where did the money go? Instead of building
more capacity, much of that money went to cover
the massive operating expenses for the theme
park. And according to the indictment, Baker
kept at least $3 .4 million in bonuses for himself.
So he was selling a product he knew for a fact
he could not deliver. That's the legal definition
of mail and wire fraud. It was, in effect, a
Ponzi scheme structure, using new money to pay
for old promises. In 1988, a federal grand jury
indicted him. What were the charges exactly?
Eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire
fraud, and one count of conspiracy. And the trial
happens in 1989. And the verdict. Guilty on...
All 24 counts. And the sentence. I remember reading
this back then and just gasping. Judge Robert
Daniel Potter, a judge with the nickname Maximum
Bob, sentenced Jim Backer to 45 years in federal
prison and a $500 ,000 fine. 45 years. That is
a life sentence, essentially, for a man his age.
It was a massive, massive sentence. And the judge
made his personal feelings very clear. At the
sentencing, he said, quote, those of us who do
have a religion are sick of being saps for money
-grubbing creatures and priests. Whoa. That sounds
really personal for a judge. It did sound personal.
And that comment, that specific quote, actually
became crucial later on. Baker's lawyers appealed
the sentence. On what grounds? On the grounds
that the judge's own remarks injected his personal
religious bias into the sentencing, which is
a big no -no. And the appeals court agreed. They
eventually voided the 45 -year sentence. So he
got a do -over on the sentencing part of it.
He did. In 1992, he was re -sentenced to just
eight years. But before that, he spent time in
the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota.
And this is where we get that odd couple sitcom
scenario we mentioned in the intro. His cellmate
for a time was Lyndon LaRouche. The conspiracy
theorist, political activist. The guy who ran
for president like eight times, including once
from prison. The very same. And according to
some accounts, another cellmate for a while was
a champion skydiver named Roger Nelson. Imagine
the conversations in that cell. I would pay good
money for a transcript of those conversations.
The televangelist, the political cult leader,
and the guy who jumps out of planes for a living.
It's a surreal image. But prison did something
to Baker, didn't it? Or at least he claimed it
did. It wasn't just about waiting out the clock.
Right. He had some kind of conversion experience.
According to Baker himself, it was a time of
complete theological deconstruction. He wrote
a book in 1996 called I Was Wrong. And in it,
he admitted something just stunning for a man
who had been on TV for decades. He said that
prior to prison, he had never actually read the
entire Bible all the way through. Wait, what?
The most famous televangelist in the world had
never read the whole book. Not cover to cover,
that's what he claimed. He said he had just cherry
-picked passages, you know, taken verses out
of context to support his prosperity arguments.
In prison, he claimed he finally read it properly
and realized he had taken everything out of context.
He publicly renounced the prosperity gospel that
made him a millionaire. He said, I was wrong
to tell you God wants you to be rich. Exactly.
He seemed to be, on the surface, genuinely repentant.
He said things like, Jesus didn't teach prosperity.
He taught sacrifice. He was paroled in July 1994
after serving almost five years of his sentence.
And he comes out to a very, very different life.
His entire world had evaporated. Tammy Faye had
divorced him while he was in prison in 1992.
He owed the IRS $6 million. He was essentially
starting from zero. He was a pariah in the mainstream
church world. But Jim Backer is nothing if not
a survivor. He doesn't stay at zero for long.
No, he doesn't. In 1998, he remarries a woman
named Lori Beth Graham, a former televangelist
herself. And get this. They met and married within
50 days. He always moves fast. He does. And slowly
he starts to claw his way back onto the airwaves.
This is the phoenix rising from the ashes moment.
But the phoenix looks very, very different this
time. Very different. In 2003, he starts broadcasting
again, this time from a place called the Studio
City Cafe in Branson, Missouri. Then he moves
to a small town called Blue Eye, Missouri, to
build a new compound. a new community. It's called
Morningside. Morningside. It sounds peaceful,
idyllic. It's a whole new ministry, but the funding
came from a really interesting source. A Buddhist
man named Jerry Crawford, who credited Baker
with saving his marriage years before, invested
$25 million to get the new ministry off the ground.
Wow. That is a loyal fan. $25 million allows
you to do a lot of building. It certainly does.
And this is where we see the second great theological
invention of Jim Bakker. He moves from the theology
of success to the theology of survival. Right.
If the 80s were all about get rich, the post
-911 world is all about don't die. That's it
exactly. He embraced apocalypticism. He condemned
his old prosperity teachings as heresy, but he
replaced them with a focus entirely on the end
times. And the product line changed to match
the new theology. No more timeshares. No. Instead
of lifetime stays at a luxury hotel, he started
selling giant buckets of freeze -dried food.
The famous buckets. I've seen the clips online.
The tasty pantry buckets. Deans on toast, survival
gear, water filters, solar -powered generators.
He wasn't selling luxury anymore. He was selling
fear. Or, as he would frame it, preparation for
the inevitable collapse. And he started making
some very specific claims, didn't he? He wasn't
just a host anymore, he became a prophet. He
literally rebranded PTL. He went on air and said
it now stands for Prophets Talking Loud. That
is... Certainly a choice of very bold rebranding.
And he started claiming retroactive prophetic
abilities. He claimed on his new show that he
saw 9 -11 in 1999. He said he saw terrorism coming
to NYC and D .C. It's very easy to predict things
after they've already happened. It is. But he
kept making new predictions. He compared a 2017
Washington train derailment to the Titanic, calling
it a warning from God. But the one that always
sticks out to me is what he said after the Stoneman
Douglas school shooting. He claimed God appeared
to him in a dream. OK, and this is the one that
really sticks in my mind, too. Describe what
God looked like in this dream, according to Baker.
According to Jim Baker, God was wearing camouflage.
Camel. Head to toe camouflage. And he had an
AR -15 rifle strapped to his back. God was packing
heat. That was the vision. And Baker used this
dream to support the political idea of arming
teachers and schools. He also dove deep into
partisan politics, predicting a second American
Civil War if Donald Trump was impeached. So he
fully pivoted to the cultural and political anxieties
of the late 2010s. The polarization, the fear
of violence, the culture wars. He did. He even
went so far as to blame. natural disasters on
political figures. He claimed Hurricane Matthew
as God's punishment because of President Obama's
policies. He called Hurricane Harvey a judgment
of God and stated on air that God would punish
those who ridicule him. It's a heavy, heavy pivot.
But it worked, didn't it? He built an audience
again. He did. Morningside became a functioning
community and a media hub. He found a new flock,
people who were scared, people who felt the world
was spinning out of control and wanted answers.
But then 2020 happened and the theology of survival
collided head on with a real world pandemic.
And this is where the silver solution enters
the chat. Colloidal silver supplements. Baker
had been selling these for a while, advertising
them as sort of cure all a panacea. But when
COVID -19 hit, the claims got very, very specific.
What was he claiming? On his show, he had a guest,
a so -called naturopathic doctor, and during
their conversation, it was allegedly claimed,
or at least heavily implied, that the silver
solution could cure or treat the coronavirus
strains. Which, to be absolutely clear for everyone
listening, is not true. There is no scientific
evidence for that. It is scientifically unfounded
and frankly dangerous because it might discourage
people from seeking real, effective medical help.
And this time, the government came down hard,
much harder and faster than they did in the 80s.
after him everybody The New York attorney general
issued a cease and desist order for the false
claims. The FDA and the FTC sent warning letters.
The attorneys general of Missouri and Arkansas
both filed lawsuits against him. It's like a
greatest hits of legal and regulatory trouble.
The government was not playing around with COVID
misinformation. And the financial impact was
immediate and severe. Credit card processors
cut him off. Visa, MasterCard, American Express,
they all prohibited him from processing transactions.
So he couldn't sell his products? He couldn't
sell anything online. He had to go on air and
plead for donations, saying they could only accept
paper checks through the mail just to avoid bankruptcy.
He was deplatformed too, right? In the broadcast
sense. Yeah. AT &T, which owned DirecTV, asked
the channels that carried his show to reconsider
airing it. Networks like GEB America dropped
him. It was a massive contraction of his reach
and his revenue. And amidst all this legal stress,
his health took a major hit. In May of 2020,
Jim Backer suffered a stroke. His son Jay went
on the show and called it a minor stroke. But
his wife Lori blamed it directly on the vicious
attack of criticism he was facing from the media
and the government. So once again, the narrative
is the world is attacking us. It's never we made
a mistake. It's we are being persecuted for our
faith. Always. That narrative is the glue that
holds his following together through every scandal.
But he had to settle. In 2021, he settled the
Missouri lawsuit. What were the terms? The terms
were strict. He is permanently prohibited from
saying his silver solution could diagnose, treat,
or cure any disease. And he had to pay restitution
$157 ,000 to customers who bought the solution
during the early months of 2020. $157 ,000. I
mean, it's a lot of money to you and me, but
compared to the PTL days in the millions? It's
a drop in the bucket, pun fully intended. So
here we are today. He's back on the air, right?
He returned to the show in July 2020, just a
couple of months after the stroke. He's still
there, still broadcasting from Morningside, still
warning about the end of the world, and still
selling the supplies you'll need to survive it.
So what does this all mean when you look at the
whole timeline, 1960s puppet pioneer, 70s empire
builder, 80s prosperity icon, 90s federal prisoner,
2000s survivalist guru? What are we actually
looking at here? You know, it's so tempting to
just dismiss him as a simple grifter. And the
fraud conviction speaks for itself on that front.
But I think looking at the full arc of Jim Backer's
career is like looking in a strange mirror of
American anxiety. How so? What do you mean by
that? Think about the products. In the 1980s,
what did people want? They were coming out of
the economic malaise of the 70s. They wanted
glitz. They wanted success. They wanted to believe
that being a good person meant you could also
be a rich person. And Baker gave them Heritage
USA. He gave them a gold -plated gospel for a
gilded age. He sold them the dream they already
had. Exactly. And then... The world got scarier.
We had 9 -11. We had the 2008 financial crash.
We had a pandemic. We have intense political
division. People stopped dreaming of luxury hotels
and started having nightmares about societal
collapse. And what did Baker give them then?
He gave them buckets of food and a cabin in the
Ozarks to hide in. He didn't just change his
theology. He adapted his product to the prevailing
fear of the new era. He's not shaping the culture.
He is the ultimate salesman because he knows
exactly what his audience is afraid of or what
they secretly desire at any given moment in American
history. That is deeply unsettling. Yeah. But
also fascinating. It suggests that. If you want
to know where the anxieties of a certain segment
of America are at, you just have to look at what
Jim Backer is selling this week. Which brings
us to the final thought, I guess. It raises the
question, does a man like Baker create the market
for these ideas? Or is he just the most visible,
most successful symptom of a market that already
exists? Is he a cause or is he an effect? That
is a question I think I'm going to be chewing
on for a long, long time. As well you should.
It's the central question of his entire career.
Well, that is our deep dive on Jim Backer. From
the water slides of Heritage USA to the prison
cell with Lyndon LaRouche to the freeze -dried
beans of Morningside, it has been a wild ride.
It certainly has. A uniquely American story.
Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the
next Deep Dive. Stay curious.