Well-Coached Party Crashers Tell Matt Lauer Nothing; Deny Deal With NBC

A well-coached, soundbite-full Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the White House Party Crashers, appeared this morning on NBC’s Today show in a two-part exclusive interview with Matt Lauer.

They breathlessly denied any party crashing took place, explained how devastated they were by the whole ordeal, and promised more information to come soon. Just, not today.

“This has been the most devastating thing that’s every happened to us,” said Tareq Salahi, which…seems a bit extreme, but continue. “We did not party crash the White House.”

Of course, the White House and the Secret Service say otherwise. While the Salahi’s were strong in their denials, they stressed they were working with the Secret Service investigation and couldn’t give any more information as to the evidence they didn’t crash.

“We spoke in the middle of the day, and you led me to believe this story is about to take a dramatic and unexpected turn and people will change their opinions of this story,” said Lauer. “Can you shed some light on that?”

Short answer: no. But maybe after the commercial break! Here’s part one of the interview, which lasted somewhere around 90 seconds. Wait until the next part though, below:

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In the next half hour, it was more Salahis. “At no time, Matt, have we ever, uh, even talked about doing that with anyone,” said Michaele Salahi regarding Lauer’s question about payment.

More melodrama from Michaele: “Our lives have been destroyed. Everything we worked for Matt, for me 44 years, just destroyed.”

Again, nothing was said about why everyone seems to think they did in fact crash this party except them, other than for Michaele to say, “There isn’t anyone that would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that.” So, bad manners, yes. But no explanation. “We’re respecting their timeline,” Tareq said.

For the real proof, that would have to come later. And the Salahis decided to book themselves on a future edition of Today. “We’re going to be coming up to New York City and sitting on your couch, we’re going to show you documentation from emails that you know, you’ll get a chance to see,” said Tareq. “We’re prepared to be coming up there, hopefully very soon.”

So there you have it – the Salahis get to meet Matt Lauer in person, sit on the Today show couch and share their emails with the world. This will prove they are upstanding members of society, and deserve to be made into stars, not chastised and “devastated.” In fact, this whole mix-up will make for an excellent prequel to Bravo’s new season of Real Housewives of D.C., premiering in 2010!

The cross-network integration feels like an episode of 30 Rock. After the touted exclusive interview, we don’t know anything more than before, other than the Salahis like the spotlight, and are going to be back on Today soon.

Here’s the big conclusion to the Bravo promo interview:

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