Of Course Trump Had to Upstage Hoda’s Teary Today Goodbye

There was joy, laughter, hugs, tears, the return of Kathie Lee Gifford, a benediction from Oprah—and emphatically advertised brand extensions. In the chaotic spirit of the day, Donald Trump even briefly ruined the party.

Friday’s farewell to Today show co-anchor Hoda Kotb—the culmination of a “Hoda-bration” that has lasted all week—was everything a Today fan, and morning show Kremlinologist, would have expected: surprise-strewn, heartfelt, drenched in tears, and yet also sharply, commercially focused for both departing star and NBC.

However, the final stretch of the “Hoda-bration” was interrupted by breaking news of Trump’s hush money sentencing—before NBC, likely hearing the howls of Kotb’s many fans, switched back to the sight of the Today show’s lead presenters hugging Kotb on stage in her final hour.

“We’re going to celebrate everything that everyone loves about Hoda,” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie had promised at the show’s beginning.

“Let’s do this,” Kotb, 60, said with her customary go-get ‘em brio.

For fans, it was the return of Gifford—a surprise after supposedly only sending a video message—that likely rang the sweetest. Her and Kotb’s 11-year partnership, with its wine-swilling, freewheeling chat (such as Kotb famously discussing her “landing strip”) enshrined the pop-cultural celebrity of both, so much so it was satirized on SNL.

A toast with wine in absurdly large glasses ended with Gifford wishing Kotb a “prosperous” future. Gifford said she knew when Kotb adopted her daughters, Haley and Hope, she wouldn’t stay much longer in the TV presenting game.

However, in an echo of past shenanigans, the women assumed the cameras were off and they had gone to break, with Gifford divulging, “I don’t drink straight wine, not for months and months. I do all spritzers, it’s just too much.”

Elsewhere, Kermit the Frog—surprisingly brisk in a sea of schmaltz—sang “Rainbow Connection,” the song that Kotb sings Haley and Hope every night. (Viewers connected to Kotb’s late-in-life adoption of both, and the changes to her life they have brought.) Walker Hayes sang a new song, “Wednesdays,” in tribute to Kotb’s love of regular daily life. Kotb passed her “Morning Boost” baton—literally, a be-ribboned baton—to her 10 am Today With Hoda and Jenna co-host Jenna Bush Hager, who will now deliver viewers a daily uplifting tale.

“It’s been a pleasure of a lifetime to be next to you,” Hager told Kotb.

Alongside the week-long emotional send-off has been the hard-sell, as viewers of the 10 am show will have noted, of Today With Jenna and Friends, the replacement to Hoda and Jenna, beginning Monday.

The question: will viewers gravitate to Hager as loyally as they did to Kotb, especially as she is being joined not by a regular co-host but a rotating cast until NBC makes up its mind who gets the gig? (First off: Taraji P. Henson, Eva Langoria, and Keke Palmer for week one, then Scarlett Johansson for week two.)

The other unmentioned elephant in the room: the state of morning television, and the pay and standing of its anchors. Kotb’s farewell predictably featured no mention of reports that she quit the show because, as Puck first reported, she wasn’t enamored with NBC’s proposal to cut her $20 million annual salary, given the decline of morning television.

Whatever the behind-the-scenes brinkmanship, the show and its talent live in fear of the upheaval unleashed after Ann Curry’s tear-stained on-air resignation in 2012, and then Matt Lauer’s scandalous #MeToo conflagration that led to Kotb’s official elevation to co-anchor in January 2018 when she and Guthrie made history as the show’s first ever female presenting duo.

“This has to be the most popular decision NBC News has ever made,” Guthrie correctly stated at the time.

“You are love, and we love you”

The week-long farewell to Kotb leaned heavily into the show’s emphasis on “family,” and an audience’s affection for one of its most popular hosts. “You are love, and we love you,” Guthrie said in a special video package of testimonials. “Hoda is everyone’s sister, and she is like a sister to me.”

There has also been an insistence of continuity—in this case the smooth coronation of show number three Craig Melvin to co-anchor, opposite Guthrie, also beginning Monday, and of Kotb’s next big project.

Maria Shriver, Kotb’s good friend, spoke of how Kotb had made “wellness” her brand, and which—by “honoring her calling”—will now become her off-screen business as she “repots” her life.

As Kotb recently told Kelly Clarkson: “I started doing stuff that I thought seemed woo-woo and weird, and then all of a sudden, as I was doing it, I was like, ‘Wait, I feel calmer, I feel better.’ Woo-woo makes you feel good! So I am starting a wellness app and company that will involve retreats and a podcast and all kinds of things that we can get together do things that I love.”

The last of the last hurrahs—the 10 am hour Kotb hosts alongside Hager—was performed in Studio 8G, traditional home of Late Night with Seth Meyers.

“Brought to you by Kleenex,” Hager said, as the standing ovation of friends, colleagues and loved ones died down. CBS Mornings anchor Gayle King, regularly mistaken for being Kotb, dressed up like the latter and brought out a T-shirt with two faces—Kotb’s with the banner “Hoda,” and her own face on the back, “Not Hoda.”

Jimmy Fallon, presenting Kotb with some NBC elevator carpet, joked the ratings for the “Hoda-bration” were through the roof. “We’re going to do this every Friday.”

The tone of the last week of Kotb’s anchor-ship had been set Monday when the plaza was filled with 60 of Kotb’s sorority sisters. Kotb was also reunited with a husband who had lost his wife to cancer.

On Friday, Kotb and the show looked ahead. There was a rundown of next week’s special guests, including Jennifer Lopez. Simone Biles intimated she might compete in the 2028 Olympics, and Kotb might be involved in this somehow. It was announced earlier this week that Hager had her own imprint with Random House. Kotb celebrated her fellow presenter’s endeavor and headline story in the New York Times which went live at 10 am, just as the show began.

Kotb did the same Friday, torpedoing her own farewell by reminding viewers to watch Jenna and Friends. “You are loved,” Hager said, trying to bring the focus back to Kotb.

Melvin paid tribute to Kotb’s “generosity” in offering advice. Kotb told him: “Come Monday 7 am, I’m going to be dead asleep, but you’re going to be so good.”

Winfrey, who also gave up a daytime throne, sent a message, assuring Kotb she had made “the right move” for her family.

“Oprah has spoken, and it shall be,” Guthrie said.

Out on the plaza there were rapturous cheers, signs (“Thank you Hoda”), and a “tunnel of love” of Today show staff wearing Kotb’s distinctive warm hats. In the 10 am hour’s closing minutes, Kotb paid tribute to that show’s staff, singling out executive producer Talia Parkinson-Jones, “the best hire NBC made.”

A final shot showed Kotb entering the “minivan” she has spoken so much about loving since moving to the suburbs, Haley and Hope safely strapped in the back.

“Alright guys, are you ready for the next adventure? Byeee!” she said, as the doors shut and she drove away—a sign, “Just Repotted” and some rattling cans attached.

That last vision underlined what Kotb and NBC wanted to transmit about both their brands: The show will, must, go on.

Or as Kotb herself likes to say, “Let’s goooo!”