Today show 'nepo baby' Jenna Bush Hager says co-star cuttingly claimed she only got her TV job because dad George W Bush was president

Today show anchor Jenna Bush Hager has revealed one of her co-stars accused her of having landed her coveted TV job because of her famous father. 

Hager, 44, who is the daughter of President George W Bush and the granddaughter of President George HW Bush, made the claim during a segment about 'nepo babies' on air on Wednesday. 

The former first daughter landed her plum gig on the Today show back in 2009, shortly after her father left the Oval Office. 

Just two months into the job, while still learning the ropes and keenly aware that she 'didn't know anything,' the host claims a colleague bluntly told her: 'We just thought they hired you because of your dad.'

Hager declined to identify the colleague behind the offending remark, but noted that the jibe was the 'fear' of everyone who has high-profile parents.

The Daily Mail has contacted Hager's representatives for further comment. 

Hager explained: 'When people say mean things to me, which is online, that's their thing, and I get it, and it's the thing that probably all of us can feel bad about.

'But then what we do to get over that is work like crazy, work beyond, to where we're working ourselves too much,' the Dallas native alleged.

Hager claimed her purported overexertion had attracted the attention of her fellow NBC personality Maria Shriver, who is said to have asked: 'Why are you doing this?'

Shriver herself is the scion of a political family, one of her maternal uncles was John F Kennedy and her father Sargent Shriver was a longstanding Democratic Party bigwig who spearheaded Lyndon B Johnson's 'war on poverty' program.

In 1986, the year Shriver joined NBC after a brief stint at CBS, she became the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had established himself as one of the decade's reigning action stars in such pictures as The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian.

On Wednesday's episode of Today, Hager acknowledged: 'I’m sure - and I haven’t asked my boss, and I’d rather not...I was on the show because my dad was president.'

Hager and her twin sister Barbara became tabloid sensations during their father's first year in office by landing in legal trouble in Texas for drinking underage at 19.

Their notoriety was enhanced when Amy Poehler and Tina Fey memorably parodied them as bobbleheaded party girls on Saturday Night Live.

However, Hager went on to be a guest on Today during her father's second term to promote her 2007 book Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope, a nonfiction account of a teenage mother born with HIV whom she had met as a UNICEF intern in Latin America.

Hager returned to the program with her mother Laura Bush, who was then first lady, when they co-authored a children's picture book called Read All About It.. 

She openly admitted that she 'wouldn't have gotten that opportunity' if not for the family she came from, 'and I know that,' she said.

'And I think most people who have parents that, you know, we have a privilege that we know, and if you can own that...,' she told her co-host Sheinelle Jones.

Hager insisted that when she was first asked to join the Today show, she demurred because she was working as a schoolteacher.

'And then as we all know, teaching is the hardest job there is,' Hager told Jones: 'so eventually I took the interview and I started here.'