Jenna Bush Hager Had A Controversial Past Before The Today Show

Helming "Today with Jenna & Friends," Jenna Bush Hager balances her bubbly TV personality with on-screen professionalism. She's a master of public relations, not just because she is the face of NBC's morning news, but because she grew up in the spotlight that centered around her family, i.e. her father, former President George W. Bush. Her grasp on image control before her father took office, however, was amateur at best. Hager's complicated White House upbringing made her mistakes go from normal kid mishaps to public controversies.

Hager knew that once her dad was sworn in as president in 2001, her wildly lavish life in college would have to be less about parties and more about studies. That's why, as she recalled to Hoda Kotb on the "Today" show, her roommates dragged her to Mexico for one last hurrah. After chugging "mind eraser" shots on Election Day, Hager said her whole dorm room from the University of Texas at Austin drove across the border for Hager's "last week of freedom" — one week before she was assigned Secret Service protection. "There was a bar with a slide," Hager admitted. "That's all I remember." That story didn't make headlines at the time, but many of Hager's college anecdotes were all the talk back in the day.

The American college experience is usually filled with rowdy nights of drinking, but for Jenna Bush Hager, it was hard to get away with that behavior. She was arrested for underaged drinking in 2001 with her sister, Barbara, after the pair, who were 19, attempted to buy alcohol at a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas — it was Hager's second offense that year, after police cited her with alcohol possession weeks earlier. The incident made national headlines, which Hager recalled on the "Today" show as being an embarrassing moment for her family. She said that when she apologized to her father, he expressed his own regrets about Hager's public upbringing. "He said, 'I'm sorry, I told you [that] you can be normal, and you can't,'" she explained to Hoda Kotb. "You can't order margaritas."

Unfortunately for Hager, even her fun-loving personality landed her in hot water. She told Andy Cohen on "Watch What Happens Live" that she was shocked when a photo of her sticking out her tongue to the press made it on the news in 2004. "Barbara and I constantly harassed [my father] and tried to make him laugh," she said. Luckily George W. Bush found the humor in the incident, knowing that Hager's ability to let loose is really what makes her so unique.