TODAY Show host Kathie Lee Gifford recently revealed that she reached out to both Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein following the horrific allegations leveled against them by several women. Despite receiving criticism for her actions, Gifford said she has known the men for years and is convinced that every person deserves mercy. With that being said, Gifford is very clear: she utterly condemns their behavior.
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“I just want people to know I don’t judge them,” Gifford told Andy Cohen on Sirius XM. “I don’t like what they do, but God knows their hearts and there’s hope for them.”
Gifford argued that real friends don’t run for the hills when difficulties arise.
“You can’t call yourself a friend if the first minute there’s trouble, you run,” the mother of two added. “That’s called a fair-weather friend and that’s not a friend at all.”
Cosby, 80, has been accused of drugging and raping more than 50 women, while 65-year-old Weinstein has been accused of sexual assault by a number of women.
“I hope people are not misunderstanding this,” Gifford said. “I’m not saying that that kind of behavior is in any way acceptable. It isn’t, and it’s horrible, and as a woman who has experienced it, it’s awful.”
“But can we at least look at each individual case and see it for what it is?” she proposed. “And be merciful to people who are sorry for what they’ve done?”
Without mercy, Gifford argued, our society is completely hopeless.
“‘If we stop having mercy as a part of our vocabulary, Andy, our world will completely die.”
Gifford is extraordinarily open about her Christian faith, often posting Bible verses to her Twitter account — she has some 1.4 million followers.
I will wake the dawn with my song. I will thank you, LORD, among all the people. I will sing Your praises among the nations. For Your unfailing love is as high as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Psalm 57:8-10
— Kathie Lee Gifford (@KathieLGifford) March 15, 2018
“If I didn’t believe that God is sovereign in all things I would have been in the looney bin years ago,” Kathie said in an interview with CBN last November. “His ways are not our ways, his thoughts are not our thoughts. We have to trust that he has it in control, even when it seems that everything is out of control.”
Gifford has said that accepting Jesus into her life has been the “greatest decision I ever made in my entire life.”
(H/T: Sirius XM)