When reports surfaced about Robert Kennedy Jr.'s alleged affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi, the man who once told her, "I would die before I hurt you," allegedly abandoned her to protect his political career.
In her new book 'American Canto', released Tuesday, the 32-year-old says that during their relationship, Kennedy, 71, who is married to "Curb Your Enthusiasm" actress Cheryl Hines, professed his love, claimed he would take a bullet for her, and even asked her to have his baby. However, after their affair was exposed, Nuzzi says the Secretary of Health and Human Services turned on her, launching a smear campaign that reduced her to a "two-dimensional, sex-crazed cartoon."
Wild Love and Sex
"You give me a deep-seated yearning, gnawing hunger... I need everything from you," she claims he once messaged her. "He told me he loved me... characterized what he felt as 'powerful waves knocking me down.'"
Nuzzi writes that Kennedy showered her with pet names like "baby bird," "babydoll," and "babylove," and told her she made him feel free in a way he never had before — despite his three marriages.
The two met first when Nuzzi, then working for New York Magazine, interviewed him for a profile during his brief 2024 presidential bid. According to her account, what started as a professional relationship soon shifted into an emotional affair — intimate and romantic, but never physical.
News of their relationship finally spilled into the open in September 2024 — just days before the election — when Nuzzi's then-fiancé, Ryan Lizza (whom she calls "the man I did not marry" in her book), went to the media with the story.
With the scandal erupting at such a critical moment, Nuzzi says Kennedy phoned her in a panic and begged, "I need you to take a bullet for me... please."
"The deal he made with the president wrought personal complication; already, his wife had told him she would not be seen with him until after the election. Now she was in Milan reading the news, hysterical, he said," Nuzzi writes.
"It was fragile, the alliance with the president. Nothing was certain."
Love and Confessions
In her memoir "Unscripted," released last month, Cheryl Hines downplayed the entire scandal. "Of course, I hated all of it," she wrote. "The swirl of headlines, rumors, and insinuations was upsetting and overwhelming. I had hit a wall.
"My first reaction was a wave of indifference. I didn't care what had happened, who said what, what was real, what wasn't real, who was involved or why they were involved.
"I was fine with letting them all continue with the drama and the politics without me."
But as Kennedy tried to escape the growing media attention, he allegedly flipped the script and sent Lizza a letter claiming that Nuzzi was harassing him.
"The Politician read me a message he sent to the man I did not marry. It was a response, he said, to a threat he had received... He then referred to me as a stalker. Then interrupted the reading of the message to interject a comment. 'I'm sorry, I had to say that to exculpate myself,' he told me."
Nuzzi concluded that Kennedy "was supporting what would become his case with written evidence."
As the story gained traction and Lizza warned of releasing even more scandalous details, Nuzzi says Kennedy responded by launching what he calls a 'smear campaign.'
"The Politician [the name Nuzzi has apparently assigned to Kennedy throughout the book] had orchestrated a narrative in which I was not just reduced to my sexuality but into a hyper-sexualized honeypot," she writes.
Nuzzi claims that, on at least one occasion, Kennedy "engineered stories" by giving reporters quotes—insisting that they attribute them to "a source close to him."
She says her suspicion that Kennedy was behind the stories is backed up by members of the media, who apparently expected her to respond or retaliate in some way.
In her book, Nuzzi says that earlier this year, someone representing Kennedy reached out to apologize. She recalls a phone call with a person she refers to as "The Bodyguard," who told her that Kennedy had asked about how she was doing.
"He wanted to tell you that he's very sorry, and he wanted to express recognition... 'that this has also been very difficult for Olivia, and gratitude for everything she has done to help me.'"
