Matt Lauer's Larry Craig Interview: Exclusive and Excruciating

Oh gosh, Matt Lauer's interview with Senator Larry Craig and his wife Suzanne last night was uncomfortable to watch. Now I get what Lauer meant yesterday, how it must have felt to quiz Craig on the litany — the long, long litany — of gay-themed allegations (cruising, pickups, trysts) from throughout his political career and even from before, all while his wife was sitting there. Lauer did a good and deft job on this, and the Craigs candidly addressed it all head on, but the end result was the feeling of "no smoke without fire" and wow was there a lot of smoke. Not that there's anything wrong with that! The saddest part is how, if it's true (and if they're just rumors, well, there sure are a lot of them, from a lot of different sources), this guy has felt the overwhelming need to hide it and rail against it for his whole life. Here is a representative clip:

"I have a medical discharge based on my feet." Oh, Senator Craig, those feet.

Update: I'm going to have to disagree with Tom Shales, who criticized Lauer for being "anything but hard-hitting or confrontational." To my mind, that was precisely the right approach: Sympathetic, respectful, but persistent, putting each episode to Craig for his response, which created an overall effect of so many dominoes leading to that inevitable and sad moment in that airport bathroom. What Shales doesn't get is that Craig's had MONTHS of hard-hitting and confrontational — the cable shows, the late-night punchlines — the last thing that would have drawn him out would have been an antagonistic interviewer. When Lauer cited "cruising" and followed it with "whatever that means," Suzanne Craig laughed — breaking the tension of an uncomfortable moment and keeping it as comfortable, really, as it was ever gonna be. This interview didn't need to be hard-hitting; as I mention above, just the litany of episodes and innuendos, presented to Craig again and again, had a far more quietly damning effect.

(Hat tip to TVNewser, and thanks — I sort of love disagreeing with Tom Shales.)

Related:
Larry Craig To Matt Lauer: "You Know I Don't Just Walk Away From A Fight" (Except When I'm Quietly Pleading Guilty And Hoping It Will All Go Away) [ETP]

Comments

[blp58]

A foot deferment?!?!?! BwaHaHaHaHaHa! Typical Chickenhawk Repub!

[cabgx2]

Th discharge deal was probably made before he even entered the National Guard. Or, just maybe, someone saw him knocking his foot against a stall and reported him.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Definitely! You KNOW he hit on the wrong guy, the guy reported him, and because he had connections, they called it a "foot" problem... kind of like flat feet are a reason to be denied entrance to the military. Pretty sneaky... ey? A true repukingcan!

[Ihaveadream]

didn't Rush Limpbaugh get a medical deferment for a boil on his ass? Aren't these chickenhawks (and their doctors) creative?

[JDBishop5]

Why does anyone give a damn about whether Craig is homosexual, tapped his foot in a john, or about any other element of this story? If we liberals and progressives were watching the same story unfold regarding someone we agreed with, we would be outraged. We should leave the poor bastard alone and shut up.

[lornejl]

This was 1/2 hour prime time last night, this is the bull shit that the msm thinks is important. If they put that kind of effort into pre war investigating, we wouldn't be in Iraq now.

[Colmore]

So true. Could have saved countless lives, tons of money, and 3 countries. US, Afghanistan and Iraq. Georgie was too much of a good ol' boy for anyone to investigate. Unless they saw what happened to Dan Rather's career when he tried to tell the truth about Georgie.

[RecklessAbandonArteest]

Well there are lots of daily stories in the media about Iraq. And the media does a lot of questioning and investigating related to being in Iraq, etc.

Are you saying that there should be nothing on TV except coverage of Iraq?

That seems a bit extreme.

Kinda like saying we should send all your money to poor countries that need it.

And you should never again eat a fine meal because there are people starving in the world.

[drkazmd65]

As a liberal, I really don't care if Senator Craig is a heterosexual, or homosexual, or metrosexual, or celebate alien from planet X.

I care that he is an intolerant, hypocritical putz.

I would only be outraged about this all happening to a Liberal / Democrat politician if that same politican had spent large chunks of their political life passing 'family values' laws, and voting against equal recognition under law for gays.

Show me a Democrat that has done these things - then I'll be outraged.

[ylpatriot]

i dont object to Gay .. I object to hypocritical and the fact he is a pervert....

He deserves what he gets

Thats Life !!!!

[creekside]

I would respect his privacy if he respected the rights of other homosexuals. Instead he has a career long record of being against gay rights. I hate all hypocrites conservative or progressive.

[cabgx2]

My point exactly.

[epotruchyeahright]

I'm with you. Since Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, and the others, any time we can stick it to a republican we do it and watch him squirm and fight back with utter glee. I think it's disgusting. The guy is in denial about who he is and he needs sympathy, not abuse.

[SunshineDaydream]

what?!? sheer and utter hypocrisy should be exposed! he deserves not an ounce of sympathy. we all make choices, and we should be held responsible for those choices. and his choices were based on hypocrisy - a gay man voting time and again to take away gay rights. bah!!

[Colmore]

Discharged based on his feet?? What, too much tapping?

[azhiker]

He has a rare condition called, "restless toe tapping", especially when he is seated with his "wide stance". He was a peeping Tom for two minutes just to see if the stall was empty or not, that is the result of poor eyesight.

Gee "restless toe taping" syndrome and very poor eyesight kept Sen. Craig out of the national guard. He's a RepubliCON and as such he does not ever tell a lie.

[edresearcher]

Sure, and OJ had nothing to do with his wife's murder either. Most people just don't believe him -- there's too much evidence over too many years. Sadly, the truth is always the first thing to be tossed overboard when the ship start to sink.

[VPN]

Oh hell yes, Larry Craig, the gift that keeps on giving! His staying in the Senate is probably one of the best things he has done for the Dem's in his political career!

[paixa3]

I do not think he is helping the Dems in any way.

Look at the shitty voting record of America. How many incumbents are in the house and senate?????

Yet, the citizenry gets screwed more and more each day.

WAKE UP

[DefendOurConstitution]

We should be thanking the guy - after all, he's the gift that keeps on giving. I think this is because all the Republicans (not just Romney) threw him under the bus and now is payback time. Craig can probably not say nasty things about Republicans in the Senate because they have something on him (at the very least a few pieces of legislation that interest him and possibly some real dirt).

I think it was a Republican that outed Craig's arrest on the very day that Alberto Gonzales resigned in order to take the spotlight off of Gonzo's and Bush's failures with respect to DOJ, but they all figured he would just quietly resign and go with the tail between his legs. When Craig pushed back, the Republicans filed the ethics complaint. Now they are faced with either giving Craig what he wants (immunity from some shady deals? earmarks for Idaho? special legislation to favor Craig’s campaign donors? who knows) or having him in the Senate through the 2008 election and have the ethics investigation drag out through the whole election year.

My sense is Republicans will pay off Craig and he will resign in order to “spend more time with his family”. I would expect this to happen before the end of 2007, but the wild card is that Craig will not just shut up and go. Does he have some real dirt on some Republicans?

[Misanthrope2]

Larry Craig has always been an anti-environmental legislator. He is responsible for great damage to our forests and wilderness areas. He is an enemy to all of us who respect the natural world.

He deserves no sympathy or consideration.

[BlueLogic]

His poor wife deserves sympathy. Late at night when he's sleeping soundly I wonder if she's awake, wondering if perhaps her longtime husband is truly homosexual and she's been living a lie for all those years. She should have a meeting with Dina Mattos-McGreevy.

[MetalPhil]

That's how I feel about this, too. The poor woman.

I saw some of this interview on Hardball and was struck by how it looked like they were both trying incredibly hard to give off the image of normalcy. But c'mon, if you're arrested for something like that, wouldn't you go home and bitch to your wife about it? "Can you believe this? I plead guilty so it would stay out of the media's attention, but I can't believe this!" Isn't that what one's significant other is for?

Anyway, I agree with Rachel that the saddest part about this is how hard he's working to hide the fire. Of course, that's also a pretty good pun and and all..

[9Hockeyman]

Hell no you idiot. She knew that she was marrying a queen many years ago. He needed a family for appearances and she needed security. It worked well until Larry started his Bathrooms Across American tour

[cabgx2]

She probably slaps the shit out of him every night while he is sleeping. When he wake up startled, she tells him it must have been a bad dream.

[KatieBeGood]

My suspicion is that she knows and has known from the start. Craig all of a sudden married her after another gay scandal. No one working with the two had ever noticed anything between the two other than the fact that they worked in the same office.

She is undoubtedly on contract with Craig. He is probably paying her handsomely for being his cover. For the life of me I can't understand why any woman would want to waste her life like that, but perhaps she had no prospects and didn't expect to have any, and thought that being the wife of a Congressman would at least give her stature.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Therefore she gets everything she deserves... including the humiliation that comes with her husband picking men up in an airport bathroom.

[BlueLogic]

Interesting post...have you gives also heard that the "male escort" from the Ted Haggard fiasco is also claiming to have had a romantic rendezvous with one Senator Craig as well? This thing just keeps getting larger. By "thing" I mean the scandal! lmao

[RecklessAbandonArteest]

Right on.

Their's was and remains a marriage of convenience.

And she gets what she deserves for taking to the air waves and lying just as much as Larry is lying.

[lovesickbilly]

She's a boiled frog, but not to be pitied.