“Today Show” hosts had fun on Thursday morning’s broadcast when addressing a false Us Weekly report that Natalie Morales and Willie Geist had been fired.
“What are you doing here?” co-host Tamron Hall asked Morales at the start of the “Today’s Take” segment.
“Sorry, guys, you’re stuck with me,” Morales said. “And you’re stuck with Willie.”
“That’s not what I read on the Internet,” Hall joked.
The Us Weekly “exclusive” reported Morales and Geist have been fired from the show. While Morales was supposedly speaking with ABC, the outlet wrote Geist had already lined up a job with CBS.
“The rumors are wrong — period,” NBC News President Deborah Turness said in a statement. “This is the team we are committed to. And this is the team that our viewers turn to in the morning.”
After making light of the situation by bantering back and forth with Hall, Morales and Al Roker, Geist took advantage of the rumors to thank the NBC morning news program’s loyal viewers for their support.
“I just want to say — and I know Natalie feels the same way — when this totally erroneous report came out, the support and the concern blew me away on Twitter and Facebook,” Geist said. “It just reaffirmed for me how special this show is, and how great our viewers are.”