Turns out this Matt Lauer is an even sicker pervert than originally reported. The latest reports, fro Variety (hardly a right wing publication) claim that Matt Lauer gave one female colleague a sex toy as a present. Not only that, but the “present” included a note describing how Lauer wanted to use the sex toy on the unnamed female colleague.
| Matt Lauer gave female colleague sex toy, dropped his pants to another ‘allegedly’ |
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Another female colleague was ‘allegedly’ called into Lauer’s NBC office where Lauer dropped his pants. The female colleague became very distraught and denied Lauer’s alleged advances for sex. She was later reprimanded by Lauer for not engaging in sexual acts with her.
Finally, Matt Lauer would sometimes quiz female producers about who they’d slept with, offering to trade names. Lauer would also allegedly engage in a crass quiz game with men and women in the office: “fuck, marry or kill,” in which he would identify the female co-hosts that he’d most like to sleep with.
After all this, NBC still let Lauer host the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Just because Lauer has been fired from the Today Show, doesn’t mean he’s losing out on his $25 million per year contract. NBC wouldn’t answer questions if they are still paying Lauer or not.
Several women told Variety they complained to executives at the network about Lauer’s behavior, which fell on deaf ears given the lucrative advertising surrounding “Today.” NBC declined to comment. For most of Lauer’s tenture at “Today,” the morning news show was No. 1 in the ratings, and executives were eager to keep him happy.
It’s not clear if NBC is paying Lauer through the end of his contract, which expires in 2018. Lauer couldn’t be reached for comment.
Insiders say that NBC was forced to act quickly after this week’s complaint, given the severity of the accusations and the national dialogue around sexual harassment that has ended the careers of Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K. and other prominent men. Now, against a series of questions about the future of “Today,” a troubling portrait has emerged of Lauer. In front of the camera, for more than two decades, Lauer had positioned himself as America’s squeaky-clean dad. But behind the scenes, Lauer was a different person.
Despite being married, Lauer was fixated on women, especially their bodies and looks, according to more than 10 accounts from current and former employees. He was known for making lewd comments verbally or over text messages. He once made a suggestive reference to a colleague’s performance in bed and compared it to how she was able to complete her job, according to witnesses to the exchange. For Lauer, work and sex were intertwined.
“There were a lot of consensual relationships, but that’s still a problem because of the power he held,” says a former producer who knew first-hand of these encounters. “He couldn’t sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people, because he’s Matt Lauer and he’s married. So he’d have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn’t ever complain.”