NEED TO KNOW
- Jenna Bush Hager revealed on the Sept. 7 episode of Today with Jenna & Sheinelle that she recently dropped her phone in the bathtub
- The co-host jokingly blamed Hoda Kotb, explaining the accident happened as she reached for her phone to watch an inspirational video Kotb had sent her
- Bush Hager admitted she later used the phone’s “emergency override” to charge the wet device, telling Sheinelle Jones, “Mama usually emergency overrides it”
Jenna Bush Hager is blaming Hoda Kotb for a recent bathtub mishap.
On the Monday, Sept. 7 episode of Today with Jenna & Sheinelle, Bush Hager, 44, revealed she recently dropped her phone into the tub — and jokingly pointed the finger at her former co-host.
The confession came as Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones reacted to a video of a mom digging through a ball pit after her daughter accidentally dropped her phone inside.
“Sometimes I feel like — and I don’t know, tell me if you hear me — when we’re running ourselves totally ragged to do these things for our kids or sometimes at work, stuff like that happens,” Bush Hager said. “’Cause you’re totally run ragged and you forget. You’re not, like, thinking really.”
That, she explained, was essentially what happened to her after arriving home late from work one recent night.
“It was 9 p.m. and my kids were with their grandparents. I was in the bathtub and I was like, ‘Ooh, yeah — Mommy needs a little relaxation!’ ” Bush Hager recalled.
Then came the culprit. “And, actually, I’ll blame it on Hoda Kotb,” she said, turning directly toward the camera. “Yeah, Hoda!”
When Jones, 47, asked what happened, Bush Hager explained that Kotb, 62, had sent her “an inspirational speech from somebody.”
How was the video, Jones wondered? Bush Hager still doesn’t know. “I never watched it because my phone fell into the bathtub,” she said. “Fully into the bathtub.”
Bush Hager said she had been reaching for her phone from a bath tray when it slipped into the water. “It fell in, and I was like, ‘This is too much,’ ” she recalled.
Luckily she could find the device quickly, as she wasn’t using bubbles, just Epsom salts. But the situation only got more precarious when Bush Hager tried to charge the soaked device.
“You know how you’re not supposed to charge it?” she asked, as Jones noted that phones typically display a warning when moisture is detected in the charging port. “Well you can do emergency override. Mama usually emergency overrides it.”
“I didn’t know that!” Jones replied, reminding her co-host that the warning exists because charging a wet phone “can cause damage.”
“Well, I’m sure my phone is damaged,” Bush Hager replied.
As proof, Bush Hager said she went ahead with the override before heading to bed, only to wake up in the middle of the night and discover that her phone had died anyway. “My sound machine turned off,” Bush Hager remembered. “I was like, ‘Oh no, my alarm is not going to go off. I’m home alone. What if somebody breaks in?’ ”
“You had no one to snuggle with,” Jones joked.
Kotb and Bush Hager spent more than five years together as co-hosts of Today with Hoda & Jenna before Kotb departed the morning show in January 2025. Jones officially joined Bush Hager as co-host of the newly renamed Today with Jenna & Sheinelle earlier this year.
Since her departure, Kotb and Bush Hager have remained close. And Kotb — who retired to spend more time with her daughters, Haley Joy, 10, and Hope Catherine, 6 — has said that her time away from the show has given her a better look at Bush Hager’s “mega talent.”
“It was always clear to me, but it’s even clearer now…” said Kotb. “She’s incredible.”
Today with Jenna & Sheinelle airs weekdays at 10 a.m. on NBC.
