{"id":373989,"date":"2026-07-15T13:11:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/373989\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T13:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T13:11:06","slug":"jenna-bush-hager-jokes-about-austin-drinking-case-25-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/373989\/","title":{"rendered":"Jenna Bush Hager jokes about Austin drinking case 25 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-five years after an underage drinking case turned a night at an Austin\u00a0Tex-Mex restaurant into national news, Jenna Bush Hager<\/a> is joking about the incident \u2014 with one small twist.<\/p>\n

The \u201cToday\u201d co-host joined a viral social media trend in which people pretend to be interviewed for a dramatic documentary, writing that she was preparing for a hypothetical Netflix film about \u201cthat one time at El Arroyo when I was 19.\u201d<\/p>\n

The joke gets one detail wrong. The incident actually happened at the original Chuy’s on Barton Springs Road in May 2001, not El Arroyo.<\/p>\n

Bush Hager, then a 19-year-old University of Texas freshman whose father had recently become president, tried to order a margarita using another woman’s identification card, according to police. Her twin sister, Barbara Bush, was also cited for underage alcohol possession after restaurant employees called Austin police.<\/p>\n

The Chuy’s incident came about five weeks after Jenna Bush Hager was cited during an underage drinking enforcement operation at a Sixth Street bar, where undercover officers found her drinking beer.<\/p>\n

The back-to-back cases drew national attention as media closely followed the lives of the president’s twin daughters during the opening months of George W. Bush’s administration.<\/p>\n

Bush Hager later pleaded no contest in both cases. A judge ordered her to complete community service, attend alcohol education classes and a victim-impact panel, pay court costs and temporarily surrender her driver’s license.<\/p>\n

Despite the incident taking place at Chuy\u2019s, El Arroyo later embraced the story. During Bush Hager\u2019s 2024 visit to Austin with former \u201cToday\u201d co-host Hoda Kotb, the restaurant displayed a message on its famous marquee marking 24 years since it had supposedly served her margaritas.<\/p>\n

Bush Hager laughed off the sign on air while teasing Chuy’s.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had your opportunity and you blew it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-five years after an underage drinking case turned a night at an Austin\u00a0Tex-Mex restaurant into national news, Jenna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-373989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}