Jenna Bush Hager on Tuesday, November 19, 2024.
NBC/Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty I
In 2001, Jenna Bush Hager‘s wild night at an Austin Tex-Mex restaurant became a headache for her presidential father and made national headlines. But now that 25 years have passed, she’s proving that she can joke about it.
Hager, who now hosts Today with Jenna and Sheinelle on NBC, took to TikTok on Tuesday to take part in a trend where users pretend to be interviewed for a forthcoming Netflix documentary. For Hager, it was using someone else’s ID to order a margarita while she was underage.
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“Preparing for my Netflix documentary about that one time at El Arroyo when I was 19…iykyk,” Hager captioned a video where she sits dramatically in a chair on the Today set.
But Hager gets one thing wrong with her own story. The incident happened at the original Chuy’s restaurant on Barton Springs Road in Austin, not El Arroyo. To Hager’s credit, she corrected herself during Wednesday’s episode of Today.
“I incorrectly, with the help of the social media team, stated that I had a drink at El Arroyo. Now, I have had some drinks at El Arroyo, but the drink which we will be talking about in the ‘documentary’ was actually at Chuy’s,” Hager said. “So, I just want to say, ‘I am sorry, El Arroyo. You always served me,'” before clarifying that she was “just kidding” about El Arroyo giving her illicit margaritas while underage.
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Hager joked that she would correct the record in the fake “documentary.” Honestly, we really do need a documentary on this.
“I just want to give credit where credit is due, and I know that many of you in the comments felt as though we didn’t accurately display what was happening. But when we do the ‘documentary,’ things will be OK,” Hager said.
Since we almost certainly will not be getting a real documentary about Hager’s underage escapades, we shall regale you with them here.
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Daughters of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, Barbara and Jenna, at Inaugural ceremonies on the west side of the US Capitol building.
Greg Mathieson/Mai/Getty Images
In 2001, Hager made headlines several times for some party-girl-style shenanigans while attending the University of Texas at Austin. That February, just a month after her father George W. Bush was sworn in as President of the United States, it was revealed that Hager had asked her Secret Service detail to drive to the Tarrant County jail in Fort Worth. There, Hager and the Secret Service picked up one of Hager’s male friends who had spent time in the drunk tank for underage drinking at a Texas Christian University frat party. Quibble with the optics if you want, but that’s extremely Real One Behavior.
Then, in April 2001, Hager and her friends were busted for underage drinking on Sixth Street in Austin. Evidently, Hager was given the coolest Secret Service detail ever assembled. According to Texas Monthly, Hager and her friends were allowed to go into Cheers Shot Bar. At the same time, the Secret Service agents sat in a car outside, only to watch an undercover Austin police sting group go in and give Hager a minor in possession charge. Presidents’ daughters: They’re just like us!
That wasn’t the end of it. A month later, in May 2001, Hager (who had pleaded no contest to that MIP charge) was at Chuy’s with her twin sister, Barbara Pierce Bush, and a friend. Hager pulled out a fake ID to order a margarita, only to be recognized by waitstaff at the restaurant. The Chuy’s manager called the cops on the Bush twins, and both were again cited. Per Texas Monthly, again, Hager’s Secret Service detail attempted to try to quell the whole fracas by telling Austin police the twins would leave. But according to a later police report, Chuy’s Manager Mia Lawrence later told Austin Police that she wanted the twins to “get into big trouble.” Let he who hasn’t tried to underage drink at Chuy’s cast the first stone.
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Already, Hager was an easy mark for tabloids and political reporters alike. In 2000, the National Enquirer published a photo of Hager at UT Austin smoking a cigarette. But because it was the 2000s, and the wild party lifestyle of a Republican president’s daughter is the perfect fodder for a media firestorm, the tabloids went nuts. The New York Post’s front-page headline called the president’s daughter “Jenna and Tonic,” and then-First Lady Laura Bush told CNN that “if we never saw their pictures in the paper again, we’d be a lot happier.”
Hager had to surrender her driver’s license, complete community service, attend alcohol education classes, and pay court costs. Today, Hager is happy to joke about her wild college days. We should all feel comfortable being a little more lighthearted about our embarrassing college antics. That’s what college is for!