Political journalist Olivia Nuzzi spoke candidly about her alleged intimate relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the 2024 election cycle, admitting she made a serious mistake.
According to Fox News, Nuzzi told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in an interview, “I had f—ed up. I did something wrong. Those ethics rules exist for a reason. They’re very good rules, and I had violated that.”
Nuzzi, who is promoting her new book American Canto, discussed the role of shame in her life and career, emphasizing that she resisted pressure from others to be “shameless” after the story emerged last year.
“There were a lot of people telling me, ‘Oh, just keep going. Cover [until] the end of the election and take some other assignment. Be shameless because everyone else involved is shameless, and you should be shameless too.’ I think shame is very important,” she said.
She reflected on how the relationship came to happen, describing it as the result of “many imperceptible errors that contributed to really just a malformed perspective that led to that type of mistake.”
“It struck me… it had to have been many imperceptible errors… And I took it really seriously,” Nuzzi continued. “At first, it’s like an intoxicating thought, you know, like, oh, could I just do that? And then immediately, it’s just, ‘No. Of course, I can’t do that and live with myself.’”
Nuzzi said she had initially viewed the relationship as “so irrelevant” after her profile of RFK Jr. in New York Magazine in November 2023, when his polling numbers had dropped.
She also addressed allegations that she advised Kennedy on how to handle a report about leaving a bear carcass in Central Park, saying her guidance was mostly Socratic.
“Anytime I ever gave him prescriptive advice, he never took it,” she explained. “I didn’t view my role as telling him what to do… As unbelievable as it is, I loved him, right? I cared about him. And I didn’t think that — I just didn’t think it was my place to tell him what to do. And I wouldn’t have wanted to tell him what to do anyhow.”
Following the revelations, New York Magazine parted ways with Nuzzi but found no inaccuracies or evidence of bias in her work. A Kennedy spokesperson has denied any physical relationship, saying he only met Nuzzi once.
Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, former Politico journalist Ryan Lizza, also recently alleged she had an affair with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, whom she covered during his 2020 GOP primary challenge against President Donald Trump. Nuzzi’s lawyer clarified that her book discusses only the RFK Jr. incident as an improper relationship in her career.
Vanity Fair, which hired Nuzzi in September as West Coast editor, is reportedly reviewing the Sanford allegations, according to insiders at Condé Nast.
