Too bad his fall from grace was so spectacular.
I suspect it was engineered. The fall of televangelism in the 1980s was basically the end of Christianity in America. This was a huge prime time event that was on television for practically a month. The Jim Baker scandal was just as big. In today's dollars it was well over a billion dollar (((industry))) and enough Americans tuned in to make it a major scandal. It was like Trump+Ukraine put together. Today no one would care. The few that did would just be glad the preachers weren't gay pedos.
According to various websites, including Wikipedia, Swaggart was targeted by a competitor pastor who Swaggart publicly shamed for doing the same thing. He snapped the photos nailing Swaggart and then sued him $10 million for defamation. He actuallly won and they settled for a little over $1 million. I guess this constitutes a new definition for revenge porn.
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