Ex-New York Magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi is opening up about a steamy, controversial online relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., painting the 71-year-old Health and Human Services secretary as a man of “insatiable appetites.”
In her forthcoming memoir, American Canto, Nuzzi claims that Kennedy professed intense feelings for her, allegedly telling her he “wanted her to have his baby” and would “take a bullet” for her, according to a New York Times interview released Friday.
The 32-year-old journalist says Kennedy was the first to declare his love, and while she initially didn’t reciprocate verbally, she admits she felt the same way.
The alleged digital romance reportedly included intimate glimpses into Kennedy’s private life. Nuzzi says she saw him flossing his teeth on video calls and even glimpsed a “dopp kit overflowing with prescriptions.”
She further alleges that despite his sobriety from a decade-long heroin addiction, Kennedy admitted to ongoing psychedelic use, including dimethyltryptamine, a substance known for inducing near-death experiences.
The pair met when Nuzzi interviewed Kennedy for New York Magazine, and according to her account, their almost year-long relationship was conducted entirely online.
While Kennedy has denied the allegations, insisting he “only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece,” sources told Page Six that the virtual encounters were sexually intimate.
The revelation of the alleged affair reportedly had personal repercussions for Nuzzi, leading to the end of her engagement to journalist Ryan Lizza and her departure from her job.
Kennedy, meanwhile, remains married to his third wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, who has publicly addressed the controversy in her memoir Unscripted. Hines recounts that she and Kennedy confronted the truth together, discrediting Nuzzi’s claims in the process. In a recent podcast, she remarked: “I think you always have to consider the source, right? So that’s where I start. And then it ends with a conversation with Bobby.”
Kennedy’s public persona has long courted controversy, from discredited anti-vaccine advocacy to bizarre claims such as a worm eating part of his brain and leaving a bear carcass in Central Park.
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