Evangelist Pat Robertson knows why tornadoes decimated parts of the Midwest last week: people didn’t pray hard enough.

During a recent episode of his show, ‘The 700 Club,’ Robertson was asked by a viewer why God “sent” the tornadoes. In response, he said, “If enough people were praying, [God] would’ve intervened…you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, [Jesus] can still storms.”

He also blamed people who live in tornado-prone areas, saying, “Why did you build houses where tornadoes were apt to happen?”

It’s not the first time Robertson, 81, has made these kinds of controversial comments about natural disasters. He blamed the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on Haitians’ “pact with the devil,” and when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, he suggested the storm was God’s punishment for allowing abortion to be legal in the US.

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