Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham appeared on The Today Show and shared with Matt Lauer her disappointment with the state of culture in America today and apparently doesn’t think that Lauer’s show is helping. By featuring such singers in their Summer Concert Series like Cee Lo Green and Enrique Iglesias, with the songs “Blank You” and “Tonight I’m Blanking You,” respectively, Ingraham believes that the Today Show and Lauer in particular, might need a “cultural intervention.”

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain appeared on The Today Show and reiterated much of his campaign talking points including that he is a problem-solver in business and “a real black man” who is prepared to lead. Yet NBC’s Savannah Guthrie took issue with Cain touting that his lack of political experience was actually a good [...]

Rachel Maddow stopped by The Today Show this morning to offer her thoughts on the potential Republican candidates for President. Yet when she got a little too excited bashing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, co-host Ann Curry laid down the law and politely reminded her to make her points “beyond argumentum ad hominem.”

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants you to know he can win the GOP nomination–and beat Barack Obama. On TODAY, Paul told NBC’s Matt Lauer he knows he’s not at the top of national polls, but his victory in the Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in New Orleans–where he won with 612 votes, beating presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney, who finished if fifth place with 74 votes. “I think people are starting to realize that what I’m talking about is sound,” insisting his campaign is gaining momentum. “We’re making great progress. The direction is in our way.”

After seeming very reluctant to cover the strange story involving Twitter, a lewd picture and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) – heretofore known as “Weinergate” — the mainstream media now seems to be embracing the story with open arms, just five days since the story broke Friday night. For evidence of that idea I present the following clip from TODAY, in which Luke Russert introduces the story as producers show the actual picture that, to our knowledge, had thus far only been shown on late night programming like The Daily Show.

With Newt Gingrich jumping into the 2012 Republican presidential campaign today, Karl Rove tells Matt Lauer “(Gingrich) could earn his way into the top tier…there is essentially no front-runner.” The Republican field remains wide open, Rove says, with time for a well-known candidate like Gingrich to make moves to break from the pack before others get into the race in the weeks before July, when Rove believes it will be too late to run for those who haven’t begun campaigning to mount an effective bid for the GOP nomination.

In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer on TODAY, House Speaker John Boehner said tax hikes are “off the table” as Republicans negotiate with the White House over extending the federal debt ceiling. “Everything else is on the table,” Boehner said.

Did you guys hear that there was a party or funny hat convention or something in the UK this morning? I don’t know too much about it but, luckily for those of us out of the loop, The Today Show offered some insight into this supposedly significant cultural event.

About five years ago if you asked any regular Today Show watcher who would take over as co-host if Matt Lauer ever left, the answer would have been an easy one: David Gregory. The natural and smooth (and tall!) Gregory had been the fill in for Lauer just about every time Lauer took any time off. He even boogied live at the 30 Rock plaza to show off his “lighter side.” But these days an 8-11AM Today Show watcher who doesn’t follow politics closely (Gregory appears to be on pretty regularly in the first half hour talking politics) might very well say David who?

While nobody at NBC has said anything–officially–about the prospect of losing not just one co-host of the country’s top rated network morning show, but two, the impact of such moves is being hotly debated. Quickly on the heels of a report that Meredith Vieira may opt not to extend her contract with TODAY when it ends this summer (she signed a one-year extension eight months ago), comes a report that Matt Lauer may also decide to walk away. “Meredith leaving is no problem at all. Matt leaving is something else,” a news business strategist tells the New York Post‘s Claire Atkinson. ” ‘Today’ is a strong habit, but this means that the audience could taste other things.”

As Donald Trump continues to gather media attention with his persistent search for Barack Obama‘s birth certificate, one question continues to take up real estate in the public’s mind: What does Bill Cosby have to say about all this? Fortunately for everyone, The Today Show was able to get an answer to that.

Recent polls shockingly suggest that Donald Trump‘s recent presidential campaign rhetoric is not just part of a campaign promoting his show Celebrity Apprentice (or…Donald Trump), but rather has led him to be considred a serious contender in the GOP primary. He recently sat down with Today co-host Meredith Vieira in a revealing interview in which he was very critical of President Obama’s foreign policy, and also revealed that he had a team in Hawaii investigating Obama’s birth certificate.

NBC has spoken out about rumors that both Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer are set to leave The Today Show when their respective contracts expire. Vieira’s contract is set to expire this coming September, while Lauer’s runs out in December of 2012.

With the announcement this week that Meredith Vieira, co-host of NBC’s top-rated TODAY might not extend her contract when it expires in the fall, attention will surely focus on TODAY‘s news anchor, Ann Curry. While she hasn’t commented on the reports of Vieira’s interest in sleeping in and escaping the rigor of a network morning show, Curry did write about Vieira’s hiring for the job–and her being passed over–back in 2006. “What some might consider a big professional disappointment—not being named cohost of TODAY when Katie Couric left—has only clarified my mission. I would’ve loved that job, but not getting it made me think, What is it I need to be doing?”

In the article, a cover story in Guideposts magazine, Curry wrote the answer to her question of “what is it I need to be doing” came in the form of humanitarian reporting, which she has done in the years since, traveling around the world and solidifying her stature as one of NBC News’ top correspondents. She shared a story from her reporting with Guideposts:

TV Guide‘s Stephen Battaglio cites an unnamed source saying TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira will leave the top-rated morning show when her contract expires later this year. “(Vieira) is said to be weary of the demanding early morning hours and is ready to move on,” reports Battaglio, who notes that Vieira has spoken about the health of her husband as a factor in any decision to extend her stay at TODAY.

Battaglio reports Vieira has “been in discussions with NBC News executives for several months about extending her deal, which is up in September,” and quotes a source saying “NBC is doing everything they can to convince her to stay.”

In her first interview since being charged with murder, Jennifer Ann Mee, known as the “Hiccup Girl,” insisted there isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t think about the victim. In a jailhouse interview with NBC’s Amy Robach, Mee said “What if that was me behind that barrel?’” she said, in tears. “That could have been my life taken. He was very young; he was only a couple years older than I was. I think about it every day, it eats me alive.”

When it comes to gathering evidence, reporters are often on the road for much of their careers, searching for clues and bringing back dramatic scenes which would be impossible for viewers to experience without them. This is not one of those scenes. The Today Show reported yesterday on the breaking news that Lindsay Lohan may have been photographed falling outside a club this week, and promptly sent reporter Amy Robach to brave the scene, which mostly consisted of a nondescript metal wall.

No April foolin’: the so-old-it’s-fresh-again gag of the “snake in the can” proved it’s still got it. This morning on NBC’s TODAY, Matt Lauer launched into a bogus story about potato chip cans that are so child proofed that adult can’t open them. And he handed the can to Ann Curry, who had no trouble getting the lid off, of course. And out jumped an impressively long purple snake. Zing!

You might think a person who says they can’t close their eyes would avoid the brightly-lit environments of television studios. But not for Marilyn Leisz, the woman who claims she was left unable to blink or close her eyes after a surgical procedure. She talked to TODAY‘s Ann Curry, and said she felt like her “whole life has been stolen.”

Leisz sued the doctor who did her surgery and won $115,000–but she said Friday she still endures daily pain and is at risk for blindness. She says a procedure called “eyelid skin graft” is possible, but it requires major surgery and brings added risk. “I could be totally disfigured.”

On NBC’s TODAY this morning, Ann Curry had a happy story to share amid the widespread misery in Japan: an early-morning tweet from a family in the U.S. led Curry to find a family member unaccounted for in one of the country’s hardest-hit areas. Equipped with a photo of the missing relative, a schoolteacher, Curry searched–and found her.

The missing teacher, Canon Purdy, had just returned to Japan on the day of the earthquake–returning to the village of Minamisanriku, which was largely washed away by the tsunami.

The meltdown that is Charlie Sheen has spawned a series of interviews, from NBC’s TODAY to ABC’s GMA and RadarOnline. And every interview delivers a new, awful headline. In a talk with RadarOnline.com’s Dylan Howard, Sheen proceeds to call cancer patients mother****ers. “Okay, Pop walk through a cancer ward right now and find any of those mother****ers who look like me.”

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has yet again doused hopes from some corners that he might be thinking of running for president in 2012, saying reports that a longtime associate had formed a federal political action committee to capitalize on Christie fever was no sign he’s actually thinking of giving it a go. “I don’t have a federal PAC. That was an old partner of mine. I haven’t done it. I don’t have any plans to do it,” he told the TODAY Show’s Ann Curry. “But I’m not running,”

You’ve likely heard that New Zealand has been dealing with fatal earthquakes, with at least 65 people already presumed dead in Christchurch. This morning, Ashburton, New Zealand resident and broadcasting student Cameron Betts spoke to Today host Meredith Vieira about his experience of the quake.

Barbara Bush and former president George H.W. Bush have been married for nearly 66 years now (the two were wed in 1945) and still somehow manage to seem quite in love, as their Today Show interview with granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager clearly demonstrates. It’s a love so strong it can withstand the odd John Boehner joke.

First Lady Michelle Obama appeared with Matt Lauer on The Today Show and addressed a wide range of issues from the situation in Egypt, to her Super Bowl Party menu to her husband’s successful effort to quit smoking. While she deftly demurred on Egypt saying “I’m not going to comment on his policy decisions,” she did discuss the “hate” towards her husband brought up in Bill O’Reilly in a pre-Super Bowl interview with the president.