Jenna Bush Hager Says She Went 'Too Far' With Joke About Having An Affair

The “Today” co-host went into vivid detail about the type of guy that makes her “dehydrated” with lustful thirst.
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It seems that books are not the only thing Jenna Bush Hager checks out when she goes to a library.

On Monday’s prerecorded episode of “Today With Hoda & Jenna,” the former first daughter proved she has little shelf-control while speaking about her attraction to bookish men — even conceding at one point that she may have gone “too far.”

Hager’s admission that well-read men raise her temperature past Fahrenheit 451 began while she and co-host Hoda Kotb were discussing a recent Bustle post titled “The Thirstiest Thing A Man Can Do Is Read.”

“That’s so you,” Kotb said to Hager.

“It’s true, right?” Hager agreed. “Thirsty. I’m dehydrated when a man takes out a book.”

Kotb asked how Hager feels when she sees a “man with a book, sitting on a park bench in Central Park, reading.”

The description alone seemed to get Hager all hot and bothered.

“If they have little eyeglasses too, just sitting reading, and if they’re reading something I respect? I mean, that could be a means for an affair,” Hager joked.

But the mom of three — who married former White House aide Henry Hager in 2008 — immediately took back her comment, making sure viewers knew she was “just kidding” and “would never do that.”

“Henry and I are very happy — and he reads,” Jenna Bush Hager added.

Jenna Bush Hager and husband Henry Hager are pictured in 2012.
Jenna Bush Hager and husband Henry Hager are pictured in 2012.
Rob Kim via Getty Images

She then paused, prompting Kotb to ask why she appeared “defensive.”

“Because I shouldn’t have said that,” Hager said. “I went too far.”

But that didn’t stop her from elaborating on why she’s wild for bibliophiles, especially those at the park.

“In-nature reading gives you extra points,” Hager said excitedly. “Nature, plus glasses, plus book!”

Kotb then showed Hager three photos of famous actors reading. Ryan Reynolds and Channing Tatum appeared to just be holding books and not reading, which Hager said she wasn’t into. But a photo of Michael B. Jordan engrossed in a book while sitting next to a bathtub seemed to wet, er, whet Hager’s appetite.

“Michael B. Jordan is the only one I’m interested in because he’s by a bathtub and he’s actually reading. Look at him! And he’s in a tank top, OK,” Hager said before breathing loudly and suggestively.

We’re not sure if Hager’s husband was reading a book when she first saw him. But considering that she recently said she proposed after just three months of dating, we’d like to imagine he was — and she immediately wanted to crack him open and break his spine.

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