Ryan Lochte has the entitled, emergency response act down to perfection, hitting all the important rules in public relations 101 such as — getting rid of the crazy blonde hair for a more conservative look.
Lochte gave Matt Lauer of NBC the exclusive on his first sit down interview since being caught lying about a robbery in Rio and he still refused to admit that he caused all this commotion, instead going with the “over-exaggeration” approach and staying true to the believe that he and his teammates were “victims.”
“I’m taking full responsibility for it,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “I over-exaggerated that story. If I’d never done that, we wouldn’t be in this mess…. It was my immature behavior.”
The exclusive interview in its entirety will air Monday, Aug. 22 on “Today.”
Lochte had originally claimed that he and three teammates — James Feigen, Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz — were robbed in a taxi by men posing as police.
It later came out that Lochte and company trashed and destroyed a gas station bathroom, leading to an altercation with security.
Lochte still insisted that he was a victim.
“It’s how you want to make it look like,” Lochte said. “Whether you call it a robbery, whether you call it extortion, or us paying just for the damages, like, we don’t know. All we know is that there was a gun pointed in our direction, and we were demanded to give money.”
Lochte even teared up when he was asked how he felt about escaping Brazil safely, only to see his teammates get detained.
“Hurt, I let my team down,” he said. “I wanted to be there. I don’t want them to think that I left, and left them dry… I wanted to be there. I wanted to help out any way I could. I just wanted to make sure they were home safe before I came out and talked. “
Lochte issued a vague apology for the incident, but will still likely face sanctions for the incident, including loss of endorsements.
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