Jenna Bush Hager Confesses She Feels Like Hoda Kotb “Dumped” Her By Retiring From ‘Today’: “My Heart Was Broken”

Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb held a typical broadcast of Today focused connected wellness, which appears to beryllium nan adjacent task Kotb will research aft she retires from daytime tv successful 2025. But nan co-hosts took a infinitesimal to some lament and observe Kotb’s imminent exit, pinch immoderate much-needed joke from Bush Hager.

“When you emotion personification truthful overmuch nan measurement that I emotion Hoda — and I’ve watched her dream astir this. She’s talked to maine astir it, I didn’t cognize she was gonna spell away, but I knew it was successful her,” Bush Hager said of Kotb’s plans of moving successful nan wellness space. “I besides knew this is nan type of female that, if she didn’t travel precisely who she is, precisely what her dreams are, past it wouldn’t beryllium right.”

But that doesn’t look to make it immoderate easier for Bush Hager to judge Kotb’s retirement.

“I will say, I locomotion around, moreover [in Austin, Texas], and group are like. ‘Congratulations, Hoda!’ And I consciousness for illustration nan woman that conscionable sewage dumped,” she joked. “People are like, ‘You made nan champion choice, Hoda,’ and I’m like, did she? Did she make nan champion choice?”

Kotb besides revealed really Bush Hager initially took nan news, which she reportedly shared conscionable days earlier she went public.

“I go, ‘Jenna, I person to show you something,'” Kotb recalled. “I told Jenna and our executive shaper Talia [Parkinson-Jones] and, earlier I moreover had a chance to opportunity nan words, some Jenna and Talia go, ‘No, no, no, no!'”

Bush Hager admitted she had a “guttural” reaction.

“I was like, ‘No, you can’t!'” she said. “And past I had to matter her successful nan evening to apologize and I said, ‘I’m truthful sorry I said no. You travel your dreams, you do it and I emotion you.'”

She besides revealed that her kids had a akin guidance erstwhile she shared nan news pinch them. “When I told my kids that Hoda’s leaving I whitethorn arsenic good person said that daddy’s leaving,” she said. “They couldn’t understand it.”

But nan Today co-hosts still person rather a spot of clip near earlier Kotb officially retires from NBC. The charismatic day for her past broadcast has not been announced yet, but she plans to enactment connected nan show done early 2025.

It looks for illustration Kotb whitethorn not beryllium going acold from daytime television, however. The web is reportedly searching for ways to keep Kotb connected nan air, whether that beryllium connected primetime aliases late-night specials.

Today pinch Hoda & Jenna airs connected weekdays astatine 10/9c connected NBC.