On Wednesday night, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon told one measly joke about Matt Lauer’s downfall. On Thursday, his network-mate Seth Meyers went all in.
Because of NBC’s annual tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center, Meyers was forced to tape his Wednesday night show on Tuesday, a fact he publicized on Twitter, knowing that some viewers might think he conspicuously left all mention of the Today show host’s firing on sexual misconduct charges out of his show.
But he came back with a vengeance on Thursday, beginning his final “A Closer Look” segment of the week by going directly at Lauer, hard. “And you thought the most disgusting thing at the Sochi Olympics was Bob Costas’ pinkeye,” Meyers joked. “Well, move over, pinkeye, there’s a new, grosser sheriff in town.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“Now, you might be thinking, how bad must this behavior have been to force NBC News to fire arguably its most profitable and powerful figure?” Meyers added, before letting Lauer himself answer that question with one that he asked disgraced Fox News host Bill O’Reilly just two months ago.
"Doesn't it seem safe to assume that the people at Fox News were given some evidence that simply made it impossible for you to stay on at Fox News?" Lauer asked O’Reilly at the time.
“Wow, he was talking to Bill O’Reilly, but he just as easily could have been talking to a mirror,” Meyers said.
The host went on to recount some of the most “disturbing” details about Lauer’s alleged behavior, saying, “If you’re giving someone a dildo at work, you’re the dildo at work.” As for Lauer’s reported affinity for the game “fuck, marry, kill,” Meyers added, “I don’t know who you said you’d marry in those situations, but I do know that you killed your career and fucked yourself.”
Meyers also highlighted Lauer’s treatment of the country’s first female general election candidate at the Commander-in-Chief forum during the 2016 campaign, when he would “barely let Hillary Clinton answer a question before interrupting her.”
And then there was President Trump, “who himself has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women,” yet still found the need to weigh in on the story via Twitter. “I’m sorry, what’s that?” Meyers asked. “I can’t hear you from backstage at the beauty pageant, you creep.”
“That’s right, he said it on tape and nobody cares, because nothing matters,” Meyers said.
