Matt Lauer ‘Really Upset’ After Katie Couric Trashes Him Publicly – ‘It Made Him Lose Trust’

It’s been five years since Matt Lauer was fired from his longtime gig hosting the “Today” show over sexual misconduct claims at the height of the #MeToo movement. Now, an insider close to Lauer is giving an update on how he’s doing all these years after being “cancelled.”

Lauer ‘Really Upset’ By What Katie Couric Did

The source told People Magazine that Lauer, 64, has “kind of withdrawn from several friendships in the last year.” One friend that Lauer has taken a step back from is his former “Today” co-host Katie Couric, who he feels betrayed him by trashing him in her memoir “Going There” last year.

“He was really upset by Katie Couric’s book,” the insider said. “She shared their private text messages and she semi-slammed him. It made him lose trust.”

“His level of trust has just diminished with a lot of people he considered friends and much of that was because of Katie’s book, and because talking to people from his past is painful,” the source continued. 

Daily Mail reported that Lauer and Couric hosted the “Today” show together from 1997 until she left the morning show in 2006. He was fired from the program in November of 2017 after being accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace regarding incidents that allegedly took place while he covered the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Though Lauer has admitted to having sex with his accuser, he’s claimed that their encounters were consensual. 

Related: How Matt Lauer’s ‘Lavish Lifestyle’ Changed After His ‘Today’ Show Firing

Couric’s Memoir

In her memoir, Couric shared private text exchanges between herself and Lauer.

“I am crushed. I love you and care about you deeply. I am here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days ahead,” she wrote in one exchange, which Lauer responded to with a blowing kiss emoji.

While promoting her memoir last year, Couric said it was “really, really hard” for her to process the allegations against Lauer, adding that she feels that there was a side to him that she did not know. After doing her own research, Couric came to the conclusion that what Lauer allegedly did was “really devastating” and disgusting. 

Couric And Lauer’s Friendship ‘Just Fizzled Out’

In another interview, Couric said that her friendship with Lauer “just fizzled out” and that he “probably thought that I had abandoned him.”

“I think it’s sort of clear through the text messages that I shared, and some I didn’t because I thought they were too personal that he had written – I sort of paraphrased them – you could see when I didn’t call him that time because I heard about another situation involving a young woman I had brought to NBC,” she said. 

“And we were scheduled to have a phone call to discuss what was going on and I said, ‘I’m going to call you in a few days,’ I think he probably knew I had read that article and probably thought that I had abandoned him,” she continued.

Related: Katie Couric Defends Matt Lauer As A ‘Decent’ Man Despite Sexual Misconduct Scandal

Couric Claims She Was Never Close To Lauer

Couric went on to claim that she was not close to Lauer outside of the workplace. 

“People are like, ‘How did you not know?’ And I think people just don’t understand that the ‘Today’ show is like being in a Broadway play,” she said. 

“You can have incredible chemistry, have so much fun, everything can click, you get to know each other really well to the point of finishing each other’s sentences, but for us, that was two hours in the day,” Couric concluded. “As much as I enjoyed working with Matt, we were not social friends. We had very separate lives.”

The source close to Lauer described him as a “semi-empty nester, not working” whose two oldest children are in college and his youngest son is a 16 year-old high school student. Given how many years it’s been since Lauer’s cancellation, it seems unlikely at this point that he’ll be “un-cancelled” anytime soon.