Sheinelle Jones, co-host of NBC’s “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle,” and the show’s team put her co-host Jenna Bush Hager on the spot on Thursday, September 17, 2026, daring her to phone her father, former President George W. Bush, in the middle of a live broadcast. She did it. He picked up. And what followed was a few minutes of unscripted family television that ended with a presidential book pitch, a mangled name and a revelation the former president never saw coming.
The stunt began in the archives. The show’s team aired an early-2000s clip of Bush Hager cold-calling her father on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” proof that she could get the president on the phone without breaking stride. Jones asked whether they could do it again now that the two of them share the hour. Bush Hager protested that her colleagues keep setting her up, noting she had been pranked this way before, then reached for her cell phone anyway and held the speaker against her microphone so viewers at home could hear the other end.
A Cold Call, Answered Live
When her father answered, Bush Hager wasted no time. “You’re on TV, Dad!” she warned him.
“I’ve been trying to avoid that,” Bush quipped.
From there the conversation turned to the woman sitting beside his daughter. “I have not met Sheinelle,” Bush admitted. “I’d like to shake her hand, but it’s a little difficult.” It was the kind of pleasantry that usually closes out a segment. Instead, it opened the door to the morning’s real surprise.
The Judge He Appointed
Bush Hager told her father that Jones’ own father, Judge C. Darnell Jones, had been appointed to the bench by his administration — news to the former president, who had no idea the connection existed until his daughter said it out loud on a live morning show.
“God, you gotta be kidding me!” Bush said, before calling the news fantastic and vouching for the judge’s character. In a segment built on comic timing, it was the beat that landed hardest: a former president learning on the air that he had put his daughter’s co-host’s father on the bench.
A Book Pitch and a Dallas Invitation
Then came the pivot. Rather than hustle off the phone, Bush turned the ambush to his own advantage.
“Listen, I’m glad you called because I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’ve got a book coming out next month,” he said. “It’s called The Call of Freedom… And as a result of me taking this call, I’m hopeful I can convince you to help me sell the book.”
It was a pointed request to the host who runs the Read with Jenna book club.
Bush Hager countered with an offer of her own: come sit on the couch and promote it in person. “So are you gonna come here and be on our television show?” she asked. “I would doubt that,” her father replied. He allowed that he would like to visit at some point, then flipped the invitation around and suggested the two hosts come down to Dallas instead.
There was one problem with the pitch. Bush extended the Dallas invitation to his daughter and “Michelle.” Bush Hager, laughing, corrected him — Sheinelle, not Michelle — and Jones cracked up beside her. Her father recovered smoothly, insisting that was what he had meant all along.
The sign-off turned sincere. Bush thanked Jones for being such a good friend to his daughter and wished both hosts well. “Thank you for being a good dad to Jenna,” Jones answered. “I know you guys have a beautiful relationship and I just think you’re a good man.” Bush told her he appreciated it very much, and the call ended the way a lot of calls between fathers and grown daughters do — warmly, and slightly off the rails.
Bush Hager, the daughter of the 43rd president and the twin sister of Barbara Pierce Bush, has long mined her family for morning-television material, and her father has been a willing, if reluctant, participant. This time he arguably got the better end of the deal: a national platform for “The Call of Freedom,” secured without leaving home.
As for the handshake that has yet to happen, Bush left it where he started: he would like to meet Jones at some point, and the invitation to Dallas stands.