Jenna Bush Hager’s Son Hal 'Started Crying' After Seeing His Mom on TV

Jenna Bush Hager’s 4-year-old son, Hal, had a hilarious reaction after learning that his mom works on television.

“Hal Hager didn’t know what my job was. He didn’t know where I came to be with you every day, so I showed him the open of our show, and he started crying,” Bush Hager, 42, told cohost Hoda Kotb during the Wednesday, February 14, episode of Today With Hoda and Jenna.

“He said, ‘I don’t like it! Turn it off! I don’t like it!’ [At] first he was, like, kind of into it. He’s like, ‘Mommy!’ [and was] a little shocked. … I don’t know if the man felt deceived or he just don’t like ‘Get On Up,’” Bush Hager continued, referencing the opening’s theme music.

The news personality, who shares Hal and daughters Mila, 10, and Poppy, 8, with husband Henry Chase Hager, also theorized that maybe her son “didn’t like my suit” or “didn’t like that I was hanging with” Kotb, 59.

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Kotb immediately burst out laughing after hearing about Hal’s response to the clip.

“That is hilarious and sad,” she told Bush Hager through laughter.

Bush Hager often shares humorous glimpses into her family life. During a December 2023 episode of the morning show, she shared how Hal “gaslights [her] all the time” when it comes to bedtime stories.

“You know how my favorite book is about a mother loving their son? Last night he said, ‘Daddy’s gonna read this book.’ He’s like, ‘No, this is my special book with Daddy,’” she told Kotb. “And then I hear Henry [reading], ‘Mommy says to baby giraffe, I love you so.’ And I’m, like, [annoyed].”

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Earlier that month, Bush Hager revealed that her kids don’t always address her the way she’d like.

“[My kids] call me bro,” she said. “Why would they call us, their loving mothers, bro?”

Kotb then made it clear that she doesn’t allow daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 4, whom she shares with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman, to get away with that kind of behavior.

“I always say to my kids, ‘You do not call your mother bro,’” she quipped.

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Bush Hager has had less success laying down the law, and told Kotb that her kids also call her by her full name.

“Wait, they call you Jenna Bush in your own house?” Kotb asked.

Bush Hager replied: “All the time! All of them, all three of them gang up against me and I’m like, ‘You wanna try mom?’ And they’re like, ‘You call me Mila, I call you Jenna.’”

After Kotb told her cohost, “You’ve lost the fight,” Bush Hager agreed, admitting, “It’s gone.”

Hal can tune in to see his mother with Kotb on NBC weekdays at 10 a.m. ET.