Hoda Kotb Tells Jenna Bush Hager to ‘Stop Being a Baby’ During Candid ‘Today’ Segment

Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager shared some differing opinions during the “Social Dilemma” segment of Today With Hoda & Jenna on Monday, October 14.

The segment began with the cohosting duo addressing a question from a fan. The fan said: “My husband and I were ghosted by a woman we’ve known for years. We are grown adults in our 50s. We’ve reached out to her several times to ask what we can do to fix our friendship, but she’s always too busy. We have a neighborhood event next week and know we’re going to see her. It’s going to be awkward. How should we handle it?”

Jenna, 42, had a puzzled look on her face as she thought about her response for a second.

“I think you just ghost her right back. Is that bad?” the Sisters First author asked, to which Hoda, 60, replied, “Yes.”

“I just mean if she ghosted you and she’s Casper and she’s friendly …” Jenna trailed off before Hoda said, “No, stop being a baby.”

Hoda felt like the fan should be friendly to the person who ghosted her.

“I think you just go ‘hey, how are you?’ Just a normal, pleasant hello,” she added. “You have no ill will, you don’t even know what happened.”

Jenna then asked Hoda if she has ever been ghosted before and she replied, “I’m sure I have, I just don’t recall. Unless it’s one of my nearest and dearest, I don’t know if I would notice. I think that she should be super polite, not cold shoulder-y.”

The former first daughter agreed with that point, saying, “It doesn’t have to be awkward if you change the narrative.”

The candid exchange and banter is just one of the reasons why fans will sorely miss seeing Hoda on Today when she leaves the show early next year. The cohost announced her departure on September 26, telling viewers that she wanted to spend more time with her daughters.

“Obviously I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have. I feel like we only have a finite amount of time,” she told her colleagues during the episode. “And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”

Hoda shares kids Haley and Hope with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman.

“There’s the guilt you carry because you can’t be 100 percent at work and 100 percent at home. Something has to give if you want excellence,” the mom of two told People in a subsequent interview. “If you’re going to be excellent at work, something has to give at home. And if you want to be excellent at home, I mean excellent, and do all the things, something has to give at work. It can’t be equal.”

Hoda is still remaining in the NBC family; however, it has yet to be revealed what her next role will be on the network. She did tease one of her new projects, which will be in the wellness space.

“It’s a whole wellness situation, and I got lit up by that just from stuff I’ve been working on and doing on myself,” she told People on October 11. “I’ve learned to do a bunch of different things with breath works and what not through friends, through Jenna [Bush Hager], through Maria [Shriver], through all these different people, and I’ve been loving it.”