Born Every Minute

There is actually something worse to worry about than the coronavirus.  And that is that good old Swindlin' Jim Bakker, the horny televangelist, is trying to tell people that the silver potion he is hawking can cure the coronavirus.

And there's something even worse than that.

People are buying it! They're sending money to that charlatan as soon as they get home from BuySumMor with 137 bottles of Purell, cases of toilet paper, and 35-packs of water.

Bakker's latest endeavor is The Jim Bakker Show, and it's among seven companies sent warning letters by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for selling unapproved products and treatments.


"The FDA considers the sale and promotion of fraudulent COVID-19 products to be a threat to the public health. We have an aggressive surveillance program that routinely monitors online sources for health fraud products, especially during a significant public health issue such as this one," FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

Johns Hopkins University, where people who know what they're talking about work, reports that there are no vaccines or approved drugs to treat or prevent the coronavirus. COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is responsible for  at least 24 deaths in the U.S. as of Monday. More than 3,800 have died around the world.

"There already is a high level of anxiety over the potential spread of coronavirus," FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. "What we don't need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims. These warning letters are just the first step. We're prepared to take enforcement actions against companies that continue to market this type of scam."

Bakker is selling nostrums that he claims contain silver, such as "Silver Sol Liquid," and he says this stuff will diagnose or cure COVID-19. He admits that his product hasn't been tested on COVID-19, but he does allow that God sent it to us.

A proud moment, when Jim swapped his expensive suits for prison jumpsuits

Some of you were not around for the Bakker heyday. Although he claims to be a minister, he is not a graduate of any college or university that offers divinity degrees. Instead, he is an evangelist, which anyone can be. He started out in the 60s with Pat Robertson's network and formed his own in the 70s. By the 80s, when cable tv brought both Ozzie and Harriet reruns and godless men of God to our living rooms, Bakker was rolling in dough with his daily "PTL Club" show. We knew people who were sending him a couple of hundred bucks a month, and "Jim and Tammy" (his then-wife was the oddly-made-up Tammy Faye Bakker) became America's new religious icons, rolling in ill-gotten gains.  They even had an air-conditioned dog house, and the now-defunct Heritage USA, a Christian themed amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

It all ended in the most 80s way possible. A bosomy church secretary, Jessica Hahn, charged that he paid her hush money (sound familiar, Donald?) to keep their affair a secret. That led him to resign from the "ministry." And then Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy, after which  Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine.  He served 5.

Tammy Faye divorced him, and after laying low for a few years, he remarried and started a new hustle called the Jim Bakker Show, from the Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri.

Besides "cures" for coronavirus, he also peddles survival food in "Bakker Buckets."  His "50-day Survival Food" sampler bucket contains 154 meals. He wants $135 for it, but when the world comes to an end and the Apocalypse is nigh, you'll be sitting pretty on your Bakker Bucket with freeze-dried dinners and your silver solution.