Can Joel Osteen Really Bench 300 Pounds?

60 Minutes re-ran a segment about the preacher Joel Osteen today, and the part at the end of this five-minute clip caught my eye:

Said 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts, without a trace of skepticism in his voice, "Osteen can bench press 300 pounds -- that's twice his bodyweight."

Finding that claim extremely hard to believe, I googled around a little bit and found that when the 60 Minutes segment on Osteen first ran, several fitness experts found it hard to believe as well.

Wrote Craig Ballantyne of Turbulance Training:

The segment concluded with a scene of Osteen in the gym, bench pressing on a smith machine, wearing gloves of course. ...

Of course, the clip shows him bench pressing about 215, maybe 235, on a smith machine, and his arms were as big as my forearms (which aren't that big).... I really, really don't believe it. ...
There's no way he can really bench 300 pounds.

I have to agree with Ballantyne. I've spent enough time in enough gyms to say that a guy wearing gloves, benching 215 pounds on a smith machine, as Osteen is in the 60 Minutes clip, is rarely a guy who can actually bench 300. If Osteen can provide video evidence of himself bench pressing 300 pounds I will give him his props, but for now I must express extreme skepticism of this claim -- and if that video exists, why didn't 60 Minutes show it?

What's fascinating about this is that if Osteen is exaggerating his weightlifting prowess, he wouldn't be the first TV preacher to do so. Pat Robertson once claimed he could leg press 2,000 pounds. Is there something about TV preachers that makes them feel the need to overstate their strength?