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Touting a taped interview with Sarah Palin stalker and author Joe McGinniss on Thursday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “Stunning allegations made about Sarah Palin in a bombshell book. Is she really the hockey mom she claims to be? How strong is her marriage to Todd?…Does she use her children as props?” [ Audio available here ] McGinniss, promoting his newly released book that amounts to an anti-Palin screed, declared the former Alaska governor to be “An utter fraud. An absolute and utter fraud.” Guthrie responded: “You call her a tenth grade mean girl.” McGinniss went further: “Oh, that's – those are kind words compared to a lot of what you would hear in Wasilla today. The thing that I found, Savannah, that really surprised me, was that the people who know her best like her least.” View video after the jump Guthrie presented McGinniss's outrageous and unfounded accusations against Palin as shocking revelations: “McGinniss describes a rocky Palin marriage, with Todd and Sarah fighting incessantly and threatening divorce, something they've denied in the past. Another bombshell, McGinniss writes that both Todd and Sarah have used cocaine in the past…” Guthrie noted that the cocaine use “has not been verified” and challenged McGinniss on the claim: “How do you substantiate something like that?” McGinniss stood by the smear: “Well, you talk to somebody who snorted it with her and you talk to many of Todd's friends who describe him as having been on the end of the straw frequently in his youth. I'm not saying that Todd and Sarah Palin today abuse cocaine or even use it. But there's no question that they both did at one point in their lives.” Despite Barack Obama having actually admitted to cocaine use in his memoir, 'Dreams of My Father,' Today never touched the issue, except on December 13 and 14 of 2007, suggesting that a Clinton campaign surrogate mentioning the “youthful” drug use was a nasty smear against then-Senator Obama. Earlier in the segment, Guthrie highlighted attacks on Palin's motherhood: “McGinniss says talking to those who know Palin convinces him there is much less than meets the eye. He accuses the famed hockey mom of using her children as props and reports she was not much of a mother at all.” McGinniss added that people he talked to insisted that “Sarah Palin was virtually nonexistent as a mother.” In addition to all of that innuendo and gossip, Guthrie made to sure mention: “McGinniss also quotes friends who speak of a sexual encounter Palin had with basketball star Glen Rice in 1987, while she was a sports reporter for a local Anchorage station.” Near the end of the segment, Guthrie sums up McGinniss's vicious attacks: “[He] portrays Palin as hands off when it came to governing Alaska, but a ruthless political opportunist who crushed her enemies and rarely lived up to the fiscal conservative image she championed.” McGinniss then asserted: “At best she's a hypocrite.” Guthrie pressed him to go further: “And at worst?” He replied: “At worst, she's a vindictive hypocrite.” Concluding the interview, Guthrie wondered: “Do you think you were fair to her in the book?” McGinniss argued: “I think I was as fair as I could possibly have been, given the fact that she told all the people who were closest to her not to talk to me.” This is not the first time NBC has provided a forum for McGinniss to spew his anti-Palin venom. On the June 1, 2010 broadcast of Today , co-host Matt Lauer conducted a live interview with McGinniss, who proceeded to rant about Palin objecting to him moving in next door to her in Wasilla: “She has pushed a button and unleashed the Hounds of Hell, and now that they're out there slavering and barking and growling. And that's the same kind of tactic and I'm not calling her a Nazi, but that's the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the '30s.” Here is a full transcript of Guthrie's September 15 interview with McGinniss: 7:01AM ET TEASE: SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Also ahead, a new book about Sarah Palin that was controversial before even one word was written. That's because the author moved into a home right next door to the Palins in Wasilla while he was researching it. And the former Alaska governor will not like what he has written about her. But does the author have an ax to grind? We're going to talk to him exclusively.