Seth Meyers didn’t get a chance to address Matt Lauer’s dismissal from NBC on Wednesday. His show had already taped the day before because of the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, something that also did its best to avoid Lauer for completely different reasons. But on Thursday, Meyers didn’t waste any time addressing the fired TODAY host and the many allegations made against him — and he pulled no punches.
Meyers looked back on Lauer’s interviews with Bill O’Reilly and Hillary Clinton, pointing out how the TODAY host could’ve easily been interviewing himself with the former. He also didn’t hide his disgust for Lauer’s alleged use of a button to lock his door from the inside or his “f*ck, marry, kill” quizzes with female producers, adding, “I do know you killed your career and f*cked yourself.”
Obviously, there’s no way to know how much everybody at NBC knew about Lauer’s behavior, especially across the different departments. This still feels like it is NBC’s way of getting their true feelings out about Lauer through their late-night programming. While SNL is likely to address some of it on this week’s new episode, Meyers has created a spot where he can speak frankly about these topics in ways that other shows on NBC can’t. We got the daytime reaction on NBC from Savannah Guthrie, now we have the honest late night one.
Meyers also targets Donald Trump’s own history with sexual misconduct and his unhinged tweets that were peppered in during the day on Wednesday. He focuses in on Trump’s speech in Missouri and how it meandered around topics in classic Trump fashion.
Sadly, Meyers is already behind on Trump and will need to spend the weekend trying to catch up. At least he can sleep knowing Christmas is back.
(Via Late Night)