Kathie Lee Gifford on Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby: ‘I Don’t Judge Them’

Kathie Lee Gifford has voiced a fairly controversial stance on Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, saying, “I don’t judge them.”

During an interview with Andy Cohen, Gifford revealed that she contacted both men following the sexual assault allegations against them and showed them support, E! News reports.

“I personally, since I got into this business as a teenage girl, I have been sexually harassed, I have been sexually abused and I have been date raped — and don’t tell me they’re all the same [because] they are not. They are not the same,” Gifford said. “Unless you’ve been through it and you can say it’s the same, then fine. If it was the same to you, OK — not the same to me. And I don’t want to throw everyone on the same manure pile.”

“Being a jerk is not the same as being a rapist — it just isn’t,” she added.

Cohen asked the TODAY co-host if she had spoken with Cosby, to which she replied, “Yes, I’ve been friends with Bill a long, long time.”

Regarding Weinstein, she explained that she did not speak with him directly, but that she did leave him a message.

“I just want people to know I don’t judge them. I don’t like what they do — but God knows their hearts and there’s hope for them. You can’t call yourself a friend when the first minute where there’s trouble, you run. That’s called a fair-weather friend and that’s not a friend at all,” Gifford continued.

“I hope people are not misunderstanding this. I am not saying that that kind of behavior is in anyway acceptable. It isn’t, and it’s horrible. As a woman who’s experienced it, it’s awful,” she also said.

“But, can we at least look at each individual case and see it for what it is, and be merciful to people that are sorry for what they’ve done? If we stop having mercy as a part of our vocabulary, Andy, our world will completely die,” Gifford concluded.

Gifford isn’t the only celebrity to open up Cosby lately, as former Cosby Show actress Lisa Bonet recently spoke about the disgraced comedian, saying that she felt he had a “sinister” side.

When asked about whether or not she had knowledge of anything related to the sexual assault and rape allegations against Cosby she confirmed that she was not aware of any.

“There was no knowledge on my part about [Bill Cosby’s] specific actions, but… There was just energy. And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed,” Bonet said. “If I had anything more to reveal then it would have happened a long time ago. That’s my nature. The truth will set you free.”

The Daily Mail reported that Bonet was also asked about the upcoming retrial that Cosby is preparing for, to which she replied, “I don’t need to say ‘I told you so’ [about Bill Cosby]. I just leave all that to karma and justice and what will be.”