© 2026 ABC News

Sunny Hostin, ABC's senior legal correspondent and a co-host of \"The View,\" recalled how she was \"very nervous\" to be seated next to Roberts during the network's coverage of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate confirmation hearings, but Roberts \"reached over and grabbed my hand.\"

\"Afterwards I sort of leaned over to her and she said, 'You did good,'\" Hostin said on \"The View\" Tuesday. \"She sort of gave me that stamp of approval that I didn't even know that I needed.\"

\"She's going to be really, really missed because we all looked up to her,\" she added.

Former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile called in to ABC's Special Report and said she \"will miss a fellow fan of the New Orleans Saints and somebody who cared about all people,\" as Roberts' family had long ties to the Bayou State.

\"Whenever I sat next to her, I felt like I was sitting next to a giant,\" Brazile said.

Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas called Roberts \"iconic, extraordinary, exacting, the consummate journalist.\"

\"We're all crestfallen at the loss of Cokie, someone we all loved, someone we all admired,\" he said.

\"PHOTO:
Lorenzo Bevilaqua/ABC
PHOTO: Terry Moran and Cokie Roberts are shown during ABC News coverage of the election, Nov. 6, 2018.
>

Senior national correspondent Terry Moran spoke about how Roberts' faith.

\"She was a devout Catholic, and those of us who worked with her on some of those stories know how important her faith was to her, how much she lived it. She was somebody who walked the walk of the Gospels,\" he said. \"One of the things you've heard a lot is how kind she was to everyone. I went through a hard time in my own life -- my own faith life -- and I will never forget how Cokie was so understanding and so warm and so supportive and I am not the only one.\"

Her former \"This Week\" co-anchor Sam Donaldson praised her role as a \"fierce advocate for women's rights and women's recognition.\"

\"We think the great ones are always going to be there and with someone like Cokie, [their passing] is going to break our hearts whether she wanted to or not. We all loved her,\" Donaldson said.

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