Jenna Bush Hager Shares Scary Driving Incident That Ended With the ‘Total Loss’ of Her Car
TODAY -- Pictured: Jenna Bush Hager on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 -- (Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)
Jenna Bush Hager says that while she’s become a better driver over time, there was one incident during which she totaled her car in her own driveway.
Hager, 42, shared the story with her Today with Hoda & Jenna audience on Thursday, Feb. 8, while speaking with guest cohost Willie Geist, who was filling in for Hoda Kotb for the day.
Their conversation began with Geist, 48, explaining that his teenage daughter Lucie just got her driver’s license. Geist and Hager then compared their own driving histories, with Hager estimating that she and her fraternal twin, Barbara Bush, “together got in 13 accidents” during their first year behind the wheel, though she added that they were “minor, minor fender benders.”
“My first year of driving, I had little impulse control issues, you know,” Hager explained. "My brain developed a little later.”
The former first daughter told Geist she has become a “pretty good” driver since her teenage years. Even so, accidents happen—and a recent weather-related incident resulted in the “total loss” of her car.
“This was icy, and I grew up in Texas,” Hager said. “I had never heard of black ice. I didn’t know what would happen.”
Hager said she was “going a little too fast” when her tires hit the ice, causing her car to spin into a tree.
“That was it. And I wasn’t injured, we’re fine,” she assured her audience.
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But before the two spent time trading stories of their driving mishaps, Geist opened up about the emotional moment he recently shared with his wife as they watched their daughter drive away for the first time. He compared the moment to watching his daughter’s first time on a bicycle after he taught her how to ride. When it comes to his daughter's driving, Geist said he is “not scared” because he knows her to be “careful” and “conscientious.”
“But the act of watching her drive away for the first time? Whoa,” he said.
Hager still has several years to go until her first child is old enough to get behind the wheel. Hager and her husband, Henry, share two daughters and one son: Mila, 10, Poppy, 8, and Hal, 4.
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