Duana and I are planning an upcoming episode of Show Your Work about The Morning Show. As I wrote last weekThe Morning Show isn’t perfect – but it’s really, really watchable, it’s compelling, we burned through all of it FAST, and partly the reason we’re so obsessed is because it’s porn for those of us who work in TV. This is the world and I guarantee you, the people at The Today Show and Good Morning America and CBS This Morning, everyone who works in broadcast news for SURE is mainlining it because it’s a show about their work lives. Jake Tapper was just tweeting about it this weekend. 

One of the things they get right on The Morning Show is how the hosts talk sh-t on hot mics. Like all the time. When they’re not on air but their mics are on, which means everything they say can be heard on headset, in control room, and anywhere in the building and sometimes beyond that’s tapped into the feed. Reporters are trained, warned, I mean we should know this, NOT to say anything you don’t want to be heard on a hot mic. Ever. If you have to, ask audio to turn your mic off or cover your mic with your hands to at least muffle the sound. We know this…and yet… 

It keeps happening. We get so into the gossip, we forget. Sometimes we don’t care, but mostly, when f-ckups happen, it’s because we forget. Or we don’t ever truly believe it’ll be leaked. 

Amy Robach was talking on a hot mic about Jeffrey Epstein. And it got leaked. Here’s what she said on the set of 20/20 after Epstein died, after the Epstein story became an international top story: 

"I’ve had this story for three years [since 2015]. I've had this interview with Virginia Roberts," she says in the video. "We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘Who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.' Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways. We were so afraid that we wouldn't be able to interview Kate and Will. That also quashed the story. ... It was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton — we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations. And I freaking had all of it. I'm so pissed right now. Every day I get more and more pissed. ... What we had was unreal."

She goes on to talk about Epstein’s death: 

"Do I think he was killed? 100 percent, yes, I do," she says. "He made his whole living blackmailing people. There were a lot of men on those planes. A lot of men who visited that island. A lot of powerful men who came into that apartment."

That’s some sh-t on ABC, as you can imagine. And they have already issued a statement about how they didn’t kill the story, it was just that the story, according to them, at the time, didn’t meet journalistic standards. Amy Robach has also released a statement saying that she was “caught in a private moment of frustration”, reiterating the network’s claim that the reporting wasn’t up to journalistic standards which is why the story never ran.  

Sure. But for the purposes of our coverage here at LaineyGossip, specifically ROYAL coverage, that bit about the palace and the threats and potentially losing Kate and Will access only adds to speculation that, well, this Epstein business was a concern for them, and that protecting Prince Andrew was a major priority – and how far would they go to accomplish that? 

That puts Prince Andrew right back in the spotlight AGAIN. Not that he ever left his mess but it’s another reason to be talking about Andrew and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the dead rapist pedophile, and Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s allegation that she was sex trafficked to the second son of the Queen of England. And here he was, Andrew, hoping that the story would fade into the background and now American reporters are venting on hot mics about what the f-ck he could have been possibly doing with a then 17 year old girl and the billionaire rapist pedophile.