Katie Couric returned to her former stomping grounds of The Today Show after leaving for nine years and talked about her former co-host, Matt Lauer.

Couric revealed on Tuesday she has ”no relationship” with the disgraced anchorman following his 2017 filing for sexual misconduct. She called Lauer “reckless and callous, and honestly abusive to other women.”

She told current Today anchor Savannah Guthrie that she did her own investigating into Lauer after accusations of sexual harassment and what she found was more information about what Lauer was like to women he worked with.

“It was devastating and also disgusting,” Couric told Guthrie. “I think what I realized is that there was a side of Matt I never really knew, and I tried to understand why he behaved the way he did, and why he was so reckless and callous, and honestly abusive to other women.”

It took Couric “a long time to process” the reality of Lauer’s alleged abuse, previously knowing him to be a “kind, considerate and a good colleague.”

While writing her memoir, Going There, it gave Couric the opportunity to look back at the “very permissive environment in the ’90s that would often result in serious transgression,” and realize “our notion of what a consensual relationship has changed dramatically.

Couric also added personal text messages that she and Lauer exchanged after his dismissal from NBC. She wrote, “Matt thinks I betrayed him… he betrayed me, too, by how he behaved behind closed doors at the show we both cared about so much.”

Couric stated she and Lauer no longer have a relationship and explained why she added the text messages to her memoir.

“You know, I know think I used those because thought they were very illustrative of how our relationship evolved and ultimately deteriorated,” she said. “So I thought that was a powerful way to kind of really let the reader into my thought process and as I got more and more information it was harder and harder for me to reconcile those two sides.”

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Article by Samantha Arce

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