protecting pat robertson

If you are reading this, Pat Robertson has died, but not on my watch.

The book "Protecting Pat Robertson: Confessions of a High-Priced Bag Man" started merely as a series of recollections, remembrances, and anecdotal stories about my years of service as a bodyguard for Pat Robertson and as the Director of Security for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). I originally wanted to share some of the funny, quirky, and unique experiences that took place while I was employed to keep Pat Robertson alive. 

Here's what happened.

In writing this book, I realized I fell under the charismatic spell of Marion Gordon 'Pat’ Robertson, like many thousands of others. Simply stated, I drank the Kool-Aid. I played the part. Worst of all, I contributed to the ‘sales job’ or what I like to call the ‘Pat Robertson Traveling Salvation Road Show.’ 

But my journey with Pat didn’t start that way. When I began, Pat Robertson was doing some wonderful and inspiring things through his international CBN ministry headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I was eager and proud to join a team of dedicated people who supported Pat’s vision of helping people all over the world. But as we all know, times change, and people also change.

So did Pat Robertson. 

This book chronicles that change. Just some of the revelations covered in this book include:

• How, with an initial investment of 7 dollars, he founded what would become a global ministry and international broadcasting network dedicated to helping people around the world and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations.
• How Pat renounced his birthright, his Southern Baptist ordination, and abandoned his legacy ministry to pursue the highest office in the land, resulting in nearly half of his dedicated ministry employees losing their jobs.
• How he took a cable television network (The Family Channel), built from tax-exempt ministry donations and, with the stroke of a pen, converted it into a private entity that he then sold, personally making him hundreds of millions of dollars.
• How he spent the last third of his life in pursuit of ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes, the majority of which were cataclysmic failures that resulted in the loss of millions of dollars of ministry donations. 
• How this ‘man of God’ partnered in business ventures with tyrannical and murderous African dictators to pursue personal riches. 
• How Pat prostituted his television ministry to raise millions of dollars of tax-exempt donations under the guise of helping save Rwandan refugees' lives from cholera but used the money to fund a personally owned gold mining company in Zaire.
• How he started, failed at, and then abandoned a multi-level marketing scheme to help Christians earn income that left most of its representatives paying for worthless materials and supplies.
• How Pat Robertson demonstrated an innate yet consistent pattern of placing many inept, unqualified, and unethical persons in control of many of his business ventures and organizations, often resulting in disastrous results.

Intrigued? You should be. And the list goes on.  Get your copy of 'Protecting Pat Robertson: Confessions of a High-Priced Bag Man today and find out what it was like Protecting Pat Robertson.

David Wilcox was born and raised in Oceanside, California, a sleepy, little beach community between Los Angeles and San Diego. After graduating from California State University at Fullerton with a bachelor’s degree in Communication, he worked as a Police Officer for the City of Oceanside. After sustaining a career-ending injury while on duty, he retired medically as one of the most highly decorated officers in the department’s history. He was even awarded the nation’s highest civilian lifesaving award from the United States Coast Guard Commandant. Later, his law enforcement experience would be a critical factor in his being recruited as an executive protection bodyguard for televangelist Pat Robertson,  the controversial 700 Club television show host and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) founder, and the controversial Christian Coalition. 

In 1988, he earned his fifth college degree, graduating magna cum laude from Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and earning a master’s degree in Communication. He was awarded the Outstanding Communication Student Award for that year. One of his student films, “If Your Eye Offendz Thee,” was awarded a Student Academy Award for animation. A segment from that project recently appeared in the 2022 Academy Award-winning feature film “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” produced by Searchlight Pictures. During his graduate studies, David began work as an executive protection officer (aka bodyguard) for Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson eventually asked him to become the Director of Security for the Christian Broadcasting Network. As a result, David knew Ralph Reed and witnessed the novitiate Executive Director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition in action. He was not impressed with the ‘smarmy’ and “unctuous” Mr. Reed.

David also was the founding force behind CBN Animation, the in-house animation production division of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Through CBN Animation, he wrote, produced, directed, and even animated various projects ranging from one-minute commercials to one-hour animated programs developed in conjunction with the Yilimei Animation Studios in Shanghai, China. His commercial broadcast production experience is also vast and varied, ranging from thirty-second spots to hour-long specials. After leaving CBN, he flourished in advertising sales and marketing as a Major Account Representative for a Fortune 5 Company. 

A prolific writer, he has penned several screenplays, scripts, and a sitcom pilot. His two books are “Protecting Pat Robertson – Confessions of a High-Priced Bagman” and the recently completed “The Trial of the Devil Incarnate: Ralph Reed – God’s ‘Flim-Flam’ Man,” the book upon which this documentary will be based.

Through this narrative memoir, David creatively exposes the scandalous truth about Ralph Reed’s duplicitous career, beginning with his years as the Executive Director of the Christian Coalition and continuing to this very day through his uber-conservative, but just as duplicitous, Faith and Freedom Coalition. This revelatory work paints an indelible panorama of Ralph Reed's chronic and obsessive duplicity and deception. It reveals his blatant disregard for the law, his unabashed hypocrisy, and the plethora of flat-out lies and manufactured propaganda he has exploited over the past three decades to support his bank account through flimflammery and deceit. 

Purchase your copy of "Protecting Pat Robertson" to get the true story of the world's most controversial televangelist and the empire that he built. 

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