Whut.

[Content Note: Domestic violence; guns.]

A child viewer wrote in to Pat Robertson's 700 Club asking what zie should do, because hir father repeatedly brandishes a gun at hir mother during arguments, in front of hir and hir little brother, and Robertson's advice to the kid was to tell hir mother to do something about it.

"You don't want to get your father busted, but you could," Robertson explained. "You ought to go to your mother and say, 'Mom, this thing is scaring me, and I ask you please to get my father to have some help.'"

"This kind of rage — I mean, one day he's going to pull the trigger," the TV preacher warned. "It doesn't take too much if you've got a loaded weapon and you're brandishing it around, 'I'm going to kill you.' And the next thing you know, the thing goes off. It may be accidentally, but the mother will end up dead."

Robertson told the child that something had to be done about the father.

"But you're a kid, what do you do? You know?" he said. "Your mother ought to take care of that."

You don't want to get your father busted. What the actual fuck. I almost can't imagine worse advice to give a child in this situation than, "Tell your mom to get your dad some help, but don't call police and get him busted, that's for sure!"

And I really love, ahem, how Robertson's already preemptively defending this violent man he doesn't even know by suggesting if he kills his wife with the gun he continually points at her in the heat of anger that it could be just an accident. Fucking hell.

It tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the Good Christian Robertson and his production team that they received this question and decided it would be a great chance to broadcast to children that they shouldn't bust out their dads to the cops, rather than deciding it was a cry for help from a child who needs adult intervention, and using their considerable resources and influence to protect that child, hir brother, and hir mother.