Transcript for Televangelist finds himself at center of federal investigation over PTL: Part 7
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! The last Dow Jones count we have today is down 508 points. In the middle of other big news stories at the time it was kind of surprising to me that it was the lead story on the broadcast night after night. It is, in its own way, as awful, as fascinating, and as impossible to ignore as a gigantic traffic accident. The nation was captivated by it. I don’t know who to believe, only god knows. It got crazy in a hurry. You have to let the witness get through to the door! It was scandalous, it was gossip, it was sex. I am in no way using this to promote myself. Jessica Hahn was quite attractive, and she was on TV relentlessly. Cameras are rolling, and your name is? Just kidding, we know who you are. We know who you are. Jessica was this center piece of a media storm she was unprepared to handle. I saw her come out of her house and face that media crowd. It’s going on two months! And it should be over with! And there was nobody there for her. Nobody, and I hate that. Dad would serve her well to tell her to lay off the TV, lay off the front page. I feel very, very sorry for Jessica Hahn because, her reputation was dragged through the mud. When in fact, she was the victim. And how does she react to that? She went in a very different direction. She was offered a lot by playboy, to pose nude. She took that money, and she was enormously popular. But you had to know that posing topless would stir up a lot of controversy, it would raise questions about your credibility. Everybody claims to have a Jessica Hahn story. The only one that has the Jessica Hahn story is Jessica Hahn. And the pictures were my choice. I wanted to do them. I thought, I want to look in the mirror and see Jessica Hahn, not Jim Bakker, this made me feel clean. What they did made me feel filthy. She gets hooked up somehow with Sam kinison, which if you want a snapshot of the 1980s, its Sam kinison singing “Wild thing.” And accompanying him is Jessica Hahn, Billy idol, Tommy Lee, rat, poison, they’re all there in the video, and it’s like, she belongs to us now. ??? Wild thing I think you move me ??? Jessica Hahn became a big star as a result of all this. What Jessica became in the height of that, that wasn’t really her. Was her people, created this Jessica Hahn. I feel like everyone paid a price because of this scandal. I was wrong. He was wrong. I feel like it is just time to forgive. In fort mills, South Carolina deposed ptl leaders Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker skipped church services today. Jim and Tammy Faye are in exile during this period. You know they hated it. This was the media story of the century. God doesn’t want us to turn back now, we’ve come too far by faith. You had a TV preacher who was raking in millions a year, you had him living large with air conditioned dog houses and houses all over the place. We are overwhelmed. I can’t believe anybody would be that interested in us. So, the bakkers principal home was in a little bedroom community called tega cay. That sort of became ground zero and the media just camped outside their driveway. Talk to us! If you talk, it will be over with. The good doctor would like you for you all to back up off this property. It was just — it was a circus. It’s just scary to us, to everywhere we go, to have to get through the press. Excuse me, that was a bumblebee. We’ve been run off the highway, we’ve been cursed by the media. We always had microphone stands set up outside, just in case. The first person who starts screaming and yelling at me I’m walking down the hill. I told Jim, after reading all the horrible publicity, I find I hate us, too, and I know it’s not true. Initially, people were very protective of Jim and Tammy Faye, and they hated those of us in the media. So it reminds me of what we see in today. I think you guys ought to go home, leave the bakkers alone, do something of national interest. Woe to those who cast the first stone. Woe! We’re the problem, and that if we would just go away and mind our own business uh, things would be okay. ??? We want to help you Jim and Tammy ??? ??? help you save your heritage U.S.A. ??? She wrote her own ballad of the woes of that, that the bakkers were going through at ptl, and how Jerry Falwell stole the ministry from them. Let’s send Falwell back to lynchburg, help the people re-build heritage usa. And at the same time, you also had popular culture taking a swing. I just want to thank all our partners for their love and support and their prayers. And the one gag that everybody always used was the mascara running. Tammy, we have a bit of goop on our face. Oh, I’m sorry. Was it — I don’t know. Satan! By then government auditors had moved in and were starting to take in accounting of how deeply in debt ptl was. The big question was, can this organization survive? The reverend Jerry Falwell quit and took the entire ptl board of directors with him. It has been a good experience for us. Falwell opened the books for the feds and suddenly, Jim Bakker had to get a criminal significant indictments for Jim Bakker and all of his lieutenants. Tammy Faye was not indicted, but that was the big talk. How could she not have known? She was wearing fur coats, she was wearing rings. And even after Jim got into some serious legal trouble they wanted to be on TV. It’s so nice to have you with us today. Even though they’re gone from ptl, the empire has collapsed, they start a new TV show, because what else would they do?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
