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President of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr., delivers a speech during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr., delivers a speech during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Jerry Falwell Jr., a prominent evangelical ally of President Trump, is taking an indefinite leave of absence from his position as the president and chancellor of a Liberty University in Virginia.
That comes days after Falwell received criticism for posting photos to social media that showed him with his pants unzipped, alongside a woman who was not his wife.
In a brief statement, Liberty University said members of its Board of Trustees had met Friday and asked Falwell to step down from his positions “effective immediately,” and that Falwell had agreed. Falwell did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NPR.
Falwell faced criticism this week from both conservative and liberal commentators after posting the controversial photo to his Instagram account. He told the Lynchburg Virginia radio station WLNI on Wednesday that the photo, which was later removed, was taken in “just in good fun” during a costume party on vacation. He said the woman in the photo was his wife’s assistant.
How is this Jerry Falwell Jr. photo even real? Also if you’re running the largest Christian university in America maybe don’t put photos of yourself on social media with your pants undone on a yacht – with random women in bad wigs. So gross, so hypocritical.
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) August 3, 2020
“It was weird,” Falwell told the interviewer. “She’s pregnant, so she couldn’t get her pants zipped. I had on a pair of jeans I hadn’t worn in a long time, so I couldn’t get mine zipped either. So I just put my belly out like hers.”
Falwell said the woman is a “sweetheart” and expressed regret about embarrassing her. He said he’d “apologized to everybody” promised to quote “try to be a good boy” from now on.
Falwell is the son of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the evangelical Christian Liberty University and the conservative “Moral Majority” movement that rose to prominence in the Reagan era.
Falwell Jr. was among the first prominent evangelicals to endorse Donald Trump during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
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