Kathie Lee Gifford joined Fox News’s Janice Dean for a recent episode on “The Janice Dean Podcast.” The pair spent the first part of the episode reflecting on the “lost art” of kindness as Gifford called it, reflecting on the need for more kindness in the world. Despite being on the podcast to promote her new movie, “The Way” , Gifford did take time on the podcast to discuss Dean’s tense relationship with former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Dean has been very critical of the former governor since 2020, when she claimed that Cuomo’s policy of ordering nursing homes to accept COVID positive patients was responsible for the deaths of her in-laws, Michael and Dolores Newman. Michael, known as Mickey to his family, was in Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn when he contracted COVID and died March 29, 2020. His wife, who went by Dee, was in assisted living at the Long Island Living Center and died of COVID just a few weeks after Mickey on April 13.

While discussing the way unforgiveness poisons a person, Gifford and Dean reflected on their own experiences with forgiving others, such as Gifford’s experiences with Howard Stern and Dean’s experiences with Don Imus. They spoke of the importance of that forgiveness and the way that had impacted them, with Gifford noting she had not spent time dwelling on Stern’s need to apologize, but more on his hurt and praying for him. Dean then pointedly asked Gifford how she could forgive Andrew Cuomo, saying she felt she could not in the present moment. Gifford, however, stated that Dean could do that right away, without excusing any bad choices he might have made. “You have such hurts because you lost two people that are precious to you and you have this sense of justice now, not just for them, but for everybody who lost somebody they love,” she said. “You know what that’s called in the Bible? Righteous anger. Nobody had more of a right to be angry, righteously, than Jesus, but he stayed on that cross. He could have come down as they taunted him. He chose, he said ‘Father, forgive them.’ Right now, you can do it sweetie, and I don’t want you carrying this around anymore.” Gifford stated that she had not lost anyone to COVID, but she did note how she lost Jewish family members during the Holocaust and how important forgiveness remained despite the horrors they experienced.

She also warned about the price that unforgiveness brings. “The price you pay is awful, so much disease is based in loss, a lack of forgiveness and… if you can’t forgive, we can’t expect God to forgive us. Jesus said you’ve got to forgive or you can’t be forgiven,” she said. She admonished Dean to pray for Cuomo. “Pray that he comes to know Yeshua,” she said, using Jesus’s Hebrew name. “Pray that he becomes a good practicing Catholic like you are, goes back to his church, and you know, believes in something bigger than himself, believes in real justice, real righteousness.”

Dean reflected on the conversation later on her Twitter. “I love [Gifford] dearly,” she wrote. “I asked her how I can forgive Cuomo and that’s when she gave me her opinion which came from a place of love and kindness. Her faith says be the first to forgive  because that’s what Jesus did. It was a beautiful moment.”