Dina Lohan Fields Questions About Lindsay's Possible Death

Dina Lohan grabbed at least 15 minutes of Today Show airtime this morning, first with a somewhat tense interview with Matt Lauer, and later with an even more tense follow-up interview. That’s double the awkwardness, double the tension. Yay?

The first round was strained, but not a TKO. Dina quickly went on the defensive, deflecting Matt’s questions by commenting on the judge, who recently stepped down from the case (Matt didn’t ask). She called news reports and tabloids “propaganda.” She repeated herself a lot. She also debated how many times her daughter had been in rehab, mused on what it means for rehab to “work” and then found a moment to take a jab at her skeevy ex-husband. It was a long segment, but here’s the gist of it:

Get it? Neither apparent nor a parent. Clever, what she did there.

But there was more, and then even more after that. Rather than re-running some of the interview footage a little later in the show like they normally do, Matt sat down with Dina again to set some things straight. Like that rehab thing! And what if Lindsay dies?! Yes, he actually asked her about that.

At a certain point, all of this becomes hard to watch: Dina’s right in that there’s a difference between court-ordered and voluntary rehab, and no matter what you think of her parenting or lack thereof, she is still a mother who’s trying, in some misguided way, to protect her daughter. It’s a bit too late for that, sure, and Dina’s occasional involvement Lindsay’s late-night life certainly didn’t help things along the way — but a mom is still a mom, and Matt Lauer just asked her if she thought her kid was going to die.

But Lauer didn’t ask Dina anything that people haven’t been saying or thinking themselves. Watching him politely articulate these unpleasant thoughts and questions, things that have long been the subtext to Lindsay’s saga, perhaps made it all the more uncomfortable.

Lauer has three kids of his own, and this was one of his more pushy interviews; after all, he has some personal investment in discussions about parenting. Dina half-assedly tries to derail him on this — he only has one daughter, and two boys, so clearly he doesn’t understand! Except he does understand. Does Dina?