ABC’s This Week Pays Tribute to Cokie Roberts: ‘Amazing Mentor and Role Model’

A significant portion of this morning’s ABC This Week was devoted to paying tribute to Cokie Roberts, the former This Week anchor and longtime ABC News reporter and analyst who passed away last week.

Anchor Martha Raddatz spoke with her panel remembering Roberts’ life and legacy. Donna Brazile said, “She was an amazing woman. Not only did she pull that ladder down for young women like myself, but she kept it down, and she kept pushing me. She had a drive like no one else.”

WaPo‘s Karen Tumulty got personal talking about how Roberts was there for her after her cancer surgery.

“She was so generous in sharing insights. She had such a deep understanding and respect for the institutions of Washington which isn’t very fashionable these days,” Tumulty said.

ABC News’ Karen Travers shared a personal story too about how Roberts checked in and helped out after her twins were born prematurely. “It wasn’t just the work. It was the life, amazing mentor and role model she was outside this building.”

NPR’s Mara Liasson said, “I became a reporter at National Public Radio because of Cokie Roberts. I was a newscaster. I wanted to be a reporter. And she, by some miracle, decided I should be her number two in Congress when she was the congressional correspondent. I got to work under her, learn how to do it, she gave me an amazing education.”

In the next segment, Raddatz brought on two old colleagues of Roberts’, This Week co-anchor Sam Donaldson and George Will.

Donaldson talked about how much Roberts did for women in the news business and said she had a particular skill to “puncture pomposity.”

“Cokie was from another Washington,” Will said. “Washington before tribalism swallowed civility. Washington before constant hysteria was taken as a sign of sophistication. She had lived here long enough, and known enough people on both sides of the aisle, to see many fighting face come crop on the rocks of reality, so she had a kind of emotional equilibrium that gave her a special credibility in a town of, as I say, constant hysteria.”

Raddatz remembered Roberts as someone with “moral clarity” and ended the show with Roberts’ final This Week sign-off in 2002.

You can watch the videos above, via ABC.