What began as a lewd sexting affair between exes New York The magazine’s correspondent Olivia Nuzzi and the Secretary of Human Health Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, have become a scandal that shakes the industry and continues to expand its radius of explosion.
Since her alleged seclusion in Malibu a year after news of her relationship with Kennedy broke, Nuzzi is trying to present the fallout from her tryst with Kennedy as a cosmic reaction to the emotional turmoil within American politics and herself.
a soda New York Times profile with softly lit photographs of Nuzzi in the grassy dunes of California and driving a convertible directly compared her to something out of Lana Del Rey’s cinematic universe. Born to Die Ingenuous crooning to their middle-aged lovers. Meanwhile, a extract of american songhis next memoir about the flirtation, which Nuzzi says was never physically consummated, lit up group chats across the media world. In the chapter, Nuzzi frames her romance with Kennedy and its consequences after the Palisades fire broke out in January.
“You can’t leave your life in flames behind,” he writes.
“Duh,” we onlookers say of his arson.
vanity fairwhere Nuzzi now works as West Coast editor, published the excerpt hours before Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, former chief Washington correspondent for politicalHe alleged that Kennedy wasn’t even the first presidential candidate Nuzzi had an affair with. In a newsletter post, Lizza wrote about finding out that Nuzzi was sleeping with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2020 and Nuzzi described him to New York.
Here’s what you need to know about the scandal that won’t go away:
Who is Olivia Nuzzi?
Olivia Nuzzi, 32, is the west coast editor of vanity fairand was previously Washington, DC correspondent for New York magazine, a position he held between 2017 and 2024. Nuzzi first burst onto the Washington media scene after detailing your experience internship for Anthony Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign, which was rocked by his own digital sex scandal, for the New York Daily News. As a campaign reporter The daily beast From 2014 to 2017, Nuzzi covered the rise of Trump during the 2016 election cycle.
Nuzzi developed a reputation for having deep inside access to some of the most prominent figures in American politics, including Trump. She profiled Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.who has been married to his third wife Curb your enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines since 2014, by New York in November 2023. The article, titled “The mind-bending politics of RFK Jr.’s spoiler campaign.” It was cutting. Nuzzi described Kennedy as a “Franken candidate” riddled with paranoia. Shortly before the news of her relationship with Kennedy broke, Nuzzi Trump profiled after the assassination attempt against him in Pennsylvania, meeting him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and taking a close look at the former president’s ear.
Nuzzi was scheduled to co-author a book about the 2020 election with her then-partner, veteran political reporter Ryan Lizza, but the project was put on hold in 2021. Nuzzi announced his engagement to Lizza in 2022, but the engagement was called off amid fallout from the news of his relationship with Kennedy.
What happened between Nuzzi and RFK Jr.?
In September 2024, former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy left an explosive report in his bulletin, State: New York magazine had placed political reporter Nuzzi on leave after her editors became aware of an inappropriate romantic relationship between her and Kennedy.
The revelation triggered an ethical crisis that spread throughout Washington and the media world. Nuzzi was one of New York most prominent writers and the face of their political coverage. In October 2024, New York announced that Nuzzi and the magazine had mutually agreed to part ways.
At that time, Nuzzi reclaimed that “some communication between a former informant and me became personal.”
“During that time, I did not directly report on the issue or use them as a source,” he added. “The relationship was never physical, but should have been disclosed to avoid the appearance of conflict.”
According to Kennedy’s staff, their meeting at her Brentwood home was reportedly the only time the couple interacted in person.
Puck News Later reported that Nuzzi had sent nude photos, described as “demure” by one source, to Kennedy. The daily beast reported that the digital issue had come to the attention of Nuzzi editors after Kennedy had boasted about receiving explicit photos of her. A source also said He daily beast that the couple had met in person on more than one occasion. According to a report from November New York Times Nuzzi profile, it was actually New York Editor and prominent technology journalist Kara Swisher, who reported on the matter to the magazine.
What is Nuzzi doing now?
Apparently failing upwards.
In October, just over a year after the scandal broke, vanity fair Global editorial director Mark Guiducci announced that Nuzzi had been hired as the magazine’s West Coast editor. your book american song – written to fulfill the joint book deal he previously had with Lizza – will be published by Simon & Schuster on December 2.
The New York Times published a glowing profile of Nuzzi in November, which he followed vanity fair publishing an excerpt in which Nuzzi romanticizes his move to the West Coast, comparing the turmoil in his life to the turmoil caused by the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles in early 2025. Nuzzi’s writings were widely mocked online. Guiducci called it “both a boldly contemporary work of poetry and nonfiction.”
What’s up with Ryan Lizza?
Ryan Lizza, 51, is a veteran political journalist and Nuzzi’s former fiancé. After the affair was revealed, Lizza voluntarily recused broke away from covering RFK Jr.’s campaign and confirmed that his romantic relationship with Nuzzi was over. Lizza left her job in political in 2025 to launch its own substack.
The breakup was complicated, to say the least. In October 2024, CNN reported that in a court filing seeking a protective order, Nuzzi alleged that Lizza “explicitly threatened to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career and reputation, a threat she has since carried out.” Nuzzi was granted a temporary no-contact order against Lizza on October 1, and another court hearing will take place on October 15. Lizza denied the allegations, calling them “false” and an attempt by Nuzzi to divert attention from the scandal. He later withdrew the request.
Lizza has responded to the release of Nuzzi’s book with a series of posts on her blog. telos Substack, beginning with an essay titled “Part 1: How I Found Out.” The publication compared the problems in Nuzzi and Lizza’s relationship to the invasive, creeping bamboo that constantly threatened to invade the garden they shared at their Georgetown home. The couple is united by exaggerated nature metaphors.
The big twist comes in the last sentence, when Lizza reveals that she is not describing the revelation that Nuzzi was having an affair with Kennedy, but rather the discovery of an affair, previously unknown to the public, that took place four years earlier, in 2020. “We have a big problem,” Lizza recalls telling the couple’s joint literary agent, “Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford.”
Nuzzi profiling Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who ran an unsuccessful campaign to win the 2020 Republican nomination, for New York magazine in 2019.
So far, Lizza has published four posts on Substack about her relationship with Nuzzi falling apart in light of her sexting affair with Kennedy. In the most recent update, she revealed that it was journalist and neighbor Kara Swisher who first tipped her off about their romance. Lizza also claimed that Kennedy has a pregnancy fetish and had told Nuzzi on multiple occasions that he wanted her to have his baby. Additionally, he has alleged that Nuzzi secretly advised Kennedy on his campaign and strategized with him on how to spot and eliminate negative stories about him, such as an account of how threw a dead bear cub in Manhattan’s Central Park in 2014.
How is american song being received?
Not well. It may not be surprising that other journalists are unwilling to cut Nuzzi any slack when reviewing his book about how he torpedoed his own reputation, but still, the reviews have been withering. Readers say that american song lacks coherencewith holding the juicy details might be expected in favor of scattered reflections, and that Nuzzi’s transparent attempts to write into Joan Didion’s literary record are extremely tortuous. A thorough Pan in Washington Post He cited this “hesitant” phrase as a representative example of his prose: “I only have a flight instinct, and informing, I never had to consider it until now, is a way of fleeing from oneself.” Critics generally agree that Nuzzi did not really take into account the serious betrayal of his profession.
Is it okay to have a romantic relationship with a source if you’re a reporter?
No.
Screwing with a source compromises the integrity of the journalist and their report, period. It also seriously damages the credibility of any media that allows this to happen, which is why New York He put Nuzzi on leave and hired a third party to investigate.
