Ahead of anchor Lester Holt’s final sign off from NBC Nightly News later that evening, NBC’s Today put on a special segment to bid their friend farewell as he left to host Dateline full time. But amid all their gooey praise and tribute video showing highlights of his career from presidential debates to mass shooting to the COVID pandemic, Holt’s more infamous moments where obviously omitted.
The segment had solemn intro as co-hosts Craig Melvin and Savannah Guthrie mourned Holt’s leaving:
MELVIN: And welcome back. Well, tonight Lester Holt will anchor his final broadcast of NBC Nightly News, stepping away from the daily grind of the evening to for more full time focus on Dateline.
GUTHRIE: But before he passes the baton to Tom Llamas, we wanted to do a little look back at our dear friend and proud Today show alum.
“You are just a class act and so unflappable and such a leader for this news division,” Guthrie gushed following a sappy tribute video. “And we're just going to miss you at Nightly News so much. But this is a wonderful new chapter that you're opening.”
During said tribute video, NBC tried to portray Holt as a fair journalist who held both sides to account equally and yet trusted to host a Republican presidential debate (Click "expand"):
HOLT: You haven’t been to the border?
VP KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe.
GUTHRIE: But won't let answers go unchallenged.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I was going to fire Comey. There’s no good time to do it, by the way.
HOLT: Because in your letter you said ‘I accepted their recommendation.’ You had already made the decision.
TRUMP: Oh, I was going to fire regardless.
GUTHRIE: A voice trusted on the biggest night.
HOLT: Good evening everyone! I’m Lester Holt. We welcome you to the Republican presidential debate.
But in reality, Holt despised fairness as a journalist virtue.
While accepting a Murrow Award in 2021, Holt came out against being fair. “The unprecedented attacks on the press in this period I’m sure will fill plenty of books....But I have a few early observations I’ll share about where this moment brings us and what we can learn…Number one is, I think it’s become clearer that fairness is overrated,” he proclaimed.
When asked about his pandemic-era sign off “Please take care of yourself and each other,” Holt explained that it came from a place of trying to reassure the audience with a positive message:
GUTHRIE: Well, you are such a voice of calm and reason. You never let anybody see you sweat. And you started kind of having this tag line at the end. I thought it really -- it just goes with your personality. How does that come to be?
HOLT: You know, it – Again, I was anchoring from home during the pandemic. And these were dark days. We're telling stories of freezer trucks on the streets of New York, you know, with the remains of people. And I thought, ‘you know, I need to have some kind of a signal or some message to the audience that, hey, I get it. We're all in this together and this is tough.’ And so I started saying, “take care of yourself and each other.”
But not so fast.
As NewsBusters had previously documented, NBC Nightly News under Holt was despair porn. They would constantly push for ineffective lockdowns while also lamenting and gawking at their harmful effects. Even as late as February 2022, Holt was fearful that for many people the pandemic “feels like it’s over.”