The hosts of ABC’s “The View” discussed Piers Morgan’s defense of Brian Williams following the NBC Nightly News anchor’s apology last week for a false of his experience in Iraq.
“I think we might start having a conversation about forgiveness, and I don’t think that’s such a bad thing,” co-host Nicolle Wallace said on the show Tuesday. “I think now the thought is, do you take him out of the chair and deprive him of the lessons he could learn?”
Morgan wrote an op-ed piece for the Daily Mail in which he stated, “America is supposed to be the great land of the 2nd chance; a country which welcomes all-comers from around the world who seek reinvention, redemption, a new start.”
“Well, where is Brian Williams’ 2nd chance?” Morgan wrote.
Wallace continued her view on Morgan’s stance.
“Piers has been through a lot of scandals of his own,” referring to the UK journalist phone-hacking flap of a few years ago. “We haven’t seen yet, though, all that much camaraderie among the sort of small group of elite journalists,” Wallace said.
Others, such as MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, have come to Williams’ defense. Rosie Perez chimed in during the discussion, calling herself a forgiving person.
“Do we just discount a person so easily? I say no. Forgiveness is big, and I wish there was more forgiveness in this world. And the joke on Jon Stewart’s show,” Perez said, referring to the late-night satirist’s acknowledgement of widespread misinformation surrounding the Iraq War … “there’s a lot of people that lied about the Iraq war, and we didn’t even forgive them, we just kept it moving.”
Noticeably absent from the conversation was Rosie O’Donnell, who last week likened Williams to Lance Armstrong in a fiery tirade, TheWrap previously reported.
Williams went on hiatus from his evening news chair after admitting he was not aboard a helicopter that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade and forced down in Iraq in 2003, as he had previously claimed several times, but was actually in a chopper behind it, TheWrap previously reported. He also canceled an appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”