Jenna Bush Hager tears up while discussing Nashville school shooting
Jenna Bush Hager was on the verge of tears when speaking about this week’s mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, saying she doesn’t understand how people are concerned about kids reading Judy Blume books when they’re not safe in class. .
The Today with host Hoda & Jenna, 41, reflected on the tragedy with her co-star Hoda Kotb on Tuesday, the day after an armed alumnus opened fire inside The Covenant School, shooting and killing three adults and three children. .
This is one of those mornings that you start with a heavy heart. You and I have jobs we do. We are journalists. We interview people, but I think there are certain moments where you’re like, you know, for a minute I just want to take off my journalism cap and be a mom,” said Kotb, 58.
“And be a human being,” Bush Hager agreed.
Jenna Bush Hager, 41, was on the verge of tears when she discussed the Nashville shooting on the Today show on Tuesday.
Bush Hager told co-host Hoda Kotb that he has a friend in Nashville and “knew of one of the girls who was nine years old who went to school yesterday and couldn’t come home.”
Kotb, who is the mother of her daughters Haley, six, and Hope, three, shared how she thinks “a lot of people have become desensitized” to mass shootings.
“If it’s not in your city, you’re like, ‘Oh, what happened? Where? How many people? Oh,'” he explained.
Bush Hager shared that he has a friend in Nashville and “knew of one of the nine-year-old girls who went to school yesterday and couldn’t come home.”
The mother of three has three children: Mila, nine, Poppy, seven, and Hal, three, with husband Henry Hager.
‘So when Henry got home from work, I said, ‘God, did you see this?’ she counted.
‘And I had to whisper because I have a nine-year-old girl who was doing her homework, and the idea that any of us could send our kids on the buses or walk or drop them off in the carpool and never hug them again. she’s just over there,” she continued, a lump in her throat.
Bush Hager also referred to the growing number of book bans in libraries and schools in the US.
Bush Hager has three children: Mila, nine, Poppy, seven, and Hal, three, with husband Henry Hager.
Children from The Covenant School are pictured holding hands as they made their way to a reunification site after the deadly shooting at their school on Monday.
“As a book lover, I just have to say, and my mother has said it as a librarian, that we care about giving our children Judy Blume and other books that are important to history, to the fabric of our country, and we? Aren’t you worried about sending our children to schools where they are not safe?’ she asked.
“I just don’t understand what has happened to a country that I know you love, that I love,” he told Kotb.
Bush Hager added that a lot has changed since she was a teacher, which was “not that long ago.”
‘Was it 15 years ago at most? we did not [active-shooter] drills I was not afraid, and I taught in the most marginalized areas of this country. I wasn’t afraid to go to school.’
Kotb said she couldn’t stop thinking about parents trying to find their children at school, recalling how she witnessed a terrified mother search for her four-year-old son George when she was on vacation last week.
Bush Hager shared his outrage that we as a country “are worried about giving our kids Judy Blume,” but “we’re not worried about sending our kids to schools where they’re not safe.”
Bush Hager noted that when she was a teacher about 15 years ago, she was never afraid and never had to do active shooter drills.
“I just don’t understand what has happened to a country that I know you love, that I love,” he told Kotb.
You know the feeling. It’s like you don’t see your child for three minutes. You’re like, “What happened?” She ended up finding George all right. But what he was thinking was that when those parents would come to that school, they would be like, “Where is my son?” he said.
‘We’ve all been afraid for a minute of losing our sight and how do you think that’s the last moment, and imagining those parents lining up to get into that school, thinking, ‘Is my kid going to run to me?’
“There were mothers hitting the buses screaming their children’s names.”
Kotb said she won’t let her children cross the street without holding her hand, explaining that she was afraid her daughter would cut herself the other day.
‘This is how we are with our children. We are protectors,” she explained.
“But we can’t protect them where … they should be most secure,” Bush Hager said.
Kotb said she couldn’t stop thinking about parents trying to find their children at school, recalling witnessing a terrified mother search for her son over the holidays last week.
Kotb, who is the mother of her daughters Haley, six, and Hope, three, believes that “a lot of people have become desensitized” to mass shootings.
Police identified 28-year-old Audrey Hale as the shooter who opened fire at The Covenant School shortly before 10:13 a.m. Monday while armed with two rifles and a handgun.
The former student shot and killed six people, including three children, Hallie Scruggs, William Kenney and Evelyn Dieckhaus, all nine.
The shooter also killed school principal Dr. Katherine Koonce, 60, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and school janitor Mike Hill, 61.
Responding officers shot and killed Hale at 10:27 a.m.
Authorities initially used the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to Hale, who was transgender and also called Aiden, but the shooter’s preferred pronouns were him/her, according to a LinkedIn page.