Jenna Bush Hager Recalls Grandma Barbara Bush Sending Her Dad George W. Bush a Seething Letter About TV Star's 'Unbecoming' Sportsmanship

Jenna Bush Hager hilariously recounted the time that her grandmother, former first lady Barbara Bush, sent a seething note home to her ex-president father, George W. Bush.

Jenna recounted the scolding she got over her childish taunts during a tennis match on the June 25 episode of TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle.

"I'm competitive," the 44-year-old explained. "I like performance around competition."

Barbara was watching over the tennis match with Jenna's late grandfather, George H.W. Bush.

"I was doing the worm and yelling, ‘Not today,'" Jenna remembered her celebratory performance during the match. "My dad thought it was very funny and he’d be like, ‘That’s my girl!'"

Jenna confessed she had "multiple" children at the time, meaning she would have been a grown, married adult performing her hilarious taunts.

"Oh! I thought this was like high school," Jenna's co-host Sheinelle Jones said.

"I like to heckle," Jenna admitted smugly in response.

Although her late grandparents were only watching Jenna's behavior and not on the receiving end of it, her heckling did not go over well with the former president and his wife.

"My grandfather really believed in sportsmanship," Jenna explained. "Like being really kind and humble and all those things. And I think my sort of behavior rubbed my grandmother the wrong way."

Barbara wrote a letter, scolding the anchor for her unsportsmanlike conduct.

"I got back from summer vacation and I'm like getting the kids ready for school... and she wrote me a letter," Jenna said. "And the best part is it was addressed to me and my dad."

Barbara reprimanded both Jenna and George W. for their tennis match escapades in the scathing correspondence.

"And she was like 'That behavior on the tennis court was not becoming,'" Jenna remembered. "'And George, you shouldn't have cheered her on either.'"

Barbara ended the note with a "P.S." instructing her granddaughter and son to throw the letter away and "don't tell anybody about it."

"Oops, you just did," Sheinelle responded with a laugh, gesturing to the rolling cameras and producers.

Jenna called her dad after receiving her grandmother's stern letter. Despite the talking-to he'd received from his mother, George W. confidently took his daughter's side.

"I'm like, 'Did you get the letter?'" she remembered. "And he's like, 'Yeah, baby, don't worry about it, throw it away. You didn't do anything wrong, you were just having fun.'"

Jenna Bush proceeded to look upward, to the "heavens," and apologize to her grandmother, who passed away in April 2018. Her husband, and the former president, died seven months later in November 2018.