Career Killer! Matt Lauer Ordered Network To Take Girlfriend Off The Air

Sleazy Matt Lauer’s disgusting history of abusing his Today show position to put the moves on women goes back more than two decades!

Although young Lauer seemed like a sweet guy, he had already begun to trade sexual favors for “advice” and network airtime.

In fact, insiders told RadarOnline.com that Lauer was actually behind his ex-fiancée Kristen Gesswein being thrown off the air after her one chance to impress network brass.

Gesswein was a hopeful young newscaster in Waterloo, Iowa, in the early ’90s when Lauer encouraged her to move to New York to be near him.

They got engaged, but soon things went sour: Lauer found himself in line to replace Bryant Gumbel, and before long, his personal life became an afterthought.

“Kristen was said to be devastated after their wedding plans were suddenly canceled,” said the insider.

“Matt told her he’d help her career, but the best she could get was a behind-the-scenes job on CNBC’s America’s Talking. Then, one day when the anchor got sick, she was asked to fill in on-air. She was so excited.”

But Gesswein never got another shot on-screen, and she felt Lauer was behind it.

“Kristen’s convinced Matt had something to do with it,” the insider said. “Matt has a definite dark side.”

Not much later, a source noted, “Matt dumped her without so much as a handshake.”

After that, Lauer left a trail of traumatized women, including former Today production assistant Addie Collins Zinone, then 24, who said her affair with Matt made her feel like a “hostage.”

“The situation really took its toll on me,” Collins Zinone said. “I changed physically. I changed emotionally. Fear crept into my life. Any confidence I had was gone. For him, it was a conquest.”

Lauer’s philandering was a sad fact of life for his first wife, TV producer Nancy Alspaugh. Asked about rumors that he’d cheated on his second wife, Dutch model Annette Roque, Alspaugh said: “I was not shocked to hear that, but it’s very sad.”