When a popular preacher gave a tongue-lashing to a famous family, they were shocked. A year later, the family opens up about the impact of that tough-love moment.
Bishop T.D. Jakes’ intervention last year during an episode of WE tv’s Braxton Family Values turned into a tough love session.
The mega pastor, who went off on Toni, Trina, Traci, Towanda, and Tamar, calling them “flat-out spoiled,” is receiving a big “thank you” from the family matriarch more than a year later.
“Did I ever thank you?” asked Evelyn Braxton during the WE tv reality family’s Monday appearance on the nationally syndicated T.D. Jakes Show.
“I’ll take it now,” replied the Potter’s House of Dallas pastor, who previously told the Braxtons their constant mean-spirited bickering was unacceptable.
“This toxicity is nauseating. If you were my daughters, I would go ballistic. They’d have to cut the cameras off,” he said.
As the siblings sat looking stunned in the July episode, along with their parents, Rev. Michael Braxton Sr. and Evelyn, Jakes continued chiding them for their on-camera verbal wars.
“This is a disgrace to all the millions of people of color who idolize you, who wish that their family could get out of the ghetto long enough to get a shot like you got,” he said.
Looking angry and disgusted, Jakes added, “And to see you climb all the way up here and talk to each other like this, it hurts us in places beyond your family. You’re spoiled! You’re flat-out spoiled.”
Instead of being offended and defensive, the family agreed with the leader’s no-holds-barred assessment and are still feeling the positive impact of listening to and heeding the much-needed disciplinary advice.
“Look at God!” said Evelyn, 68, rejoicing over the transformation she has seen in her argument-prone daughters.
“It made a difference?” asked Bishop, 59.
“Oh my God, yes!” replied the former first lady and divorcée whose marriage ended due to her preacher husband’s infidelity.
“Now they are talking,” continued Evelyn. “They don’t hold anger a long time. One can talk to the other and so on, and so forth.”
Upon hearing the Braxton matriarch’s thankful expressions, Jakes, the New York Times best-selling author of Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive, beamed and told the siblings, “Oh, I’m so proud of you.”
But mom Evelyn isn’t the only happy one.
GRAMMY® Award-winning recording artist, Toni Braxton, the most well-known and celebrated of the girls, elaborated.
“I think we still have our issues, but I think your words have helped us so much,” she said. “I mean, we still argue and get on each other’s nerves, and drive each other to drink sometimes, but we’re often reminded because of your speech and your monologue, just helped us through it…”
In moments when the singing sisters get into squabbles and spats, Toni told the therapeutic speaker, they pause and think, “Okay, what did Bishop Jakes say?”
Seeing how his pointed words of chastisement had a healthy effect on the Braxtons led Jakes to explain why he uses television as a medium to dole out helpful advice.
“There are many, many people who need counseling and can’t get it,” he said. “And when you share your story with other people, it helps all kinds of other people who don’t know how to talk [and] don’t know how to deal with it.”
Watch Bishop Jakes’ full interview with the entire Braxton clan below.
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