Olivia Nuzzi’s tell‑all novel has finally hit shelves, laying bare an obsessive romance, the use of illicit substances and poetry that falls short of any standard, all filtered through the worm‑laden mind of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s referred to simply as “The Politician.”
The 71‑year‑old Secretary of Health and Human Services is said to have broken down during a conversation with Nuzzi, confessing, “I wish I could just be with you,” and revealing that she made him feel as free as the day he was hurled from a runaway horse in his youth.
In the book, 32‑year‑old Nuzzi also recounts that the Kennedy heir desired to impregnate her.
A telling excerpt from the New York Times article says, “Olivia Nuzzi describes her affair with ‘The Politician’ — the real Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — in her new book, ‘American Canto.’”
“I would take a bullet for you,” the former Politician allegedly told the former New York Magazine journalist — but the tone changed once their relationship became public, with him asking her to take a metaphorical bullet instead, she writes.
“If it’s just sex, I can survive it,” he allegedly told her, seemingly urging her to keep their affair as nothing more than a fling (Nuzzi has always maintained that the affair was never consummated).
She also sets out how abruptly the secret romance was brought to a close, noting that Kennedy sent her an “acid note” and even threatened to involve the FBI because of her former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, who allegedly leaked the affair. According to the book, it was Nuzzi who eventually spoke with the FBI after fearing her accounts had been hacked.
Nuzzi first crossed paths with Kennedy, who is married to Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, in 2023 when she interviewed him for New York Magazine during his abortive presidential campaign. She had been engaged to Lizza, a former Politico reporter, at the time.
The Post has reached out to representatives for both Kennedy and Hines.
The glamorous blonde recounts that Kennedy, who has openly battled substance use in the past and has long boasted of sobriety, would secretly smoke the hallucinogenic drug DMT while his wife was out of the house.
The book describes DMT as inducing a “stratosphere of ego death” that returns to earth in fifteen minutes, and when Nuzzi asked what it was like, Kennedy replied, “it’s just your classic psychedelic experience.”
She also writes of hearing the Politician use another substance “that sometimes interfered with his ability to perform the work of campaigning for office. When I raised the subject, he denied it.”
Kennedy would gladly show her photos from his youth and regale her with stories from his past.
He told her about a summer when he lived with musicians Keith Richards and John Phillips, and that the Mamas and The Papas singer had bought a pharmacy so they could have access to amphetamines.
As their feelings deepened, Kennedy reportedly told her, “I need everything from you, Livvy.”
He always spoke in an earnest tone, “Everything is yours,” she recounts, adding that he wanted to have his child, which appeared equally sincere to her.
Their intimacy was so deep that on video calls he was often shirtless and she could see the clutter of his life, including a toiletry bag that jammed with prescription drugs.
One sweet moment, Kennedy described a childhood horse‑riding mishap. “When he closed his eyes… they were blue, not as the sea but as flame. After opening them, he cried. The fall from the horse was the most free he had ever felt,” he shared, and that freedom was something he pursued all his life, even finding it with her.
She, meanwhile, was unsettled by stories about a worm that had invaded his brain.
“I hated the idea of an intruder in my mind,” Nuzzi writes. Although he told a doctor that it wasn’t a worm, the legend already ran wild.
Another bizarre claim cited in the book is that Kennedy discarded a bear carcass in Central Park in 2014. Nuzzi says she persuaded him to “get ahead” of the story after a journalist reported it in 2024, noting it would “help me with rednecks and hurt me with liberals.”
There were also explicit pieces of poetry.
“I am a river. You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love,” the Politician wrote — and he also detailed, along with other bizarre details, his plans for her “womb.”
Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, now writes his own version of events on Substack.
Her mentor, podcaster Kara Swisher, confirmed to the Post that it was she who reported the affair to Nuzzi’s bosses at New York Magazine.
When confronted, Nuzzi admits she lied and her boss encouraged her to write a “tell‑all” for the magazine to “write your way out of this.” (A spokesperson for New York Magazine said editor‑in‑chief David Haskell declined to comment.)
When the story exploded in September 2024, Kennedy told her that Hines was “hysterical” in Milan and had refused to appear with him publicly until after the election, and that his alliance with Trump was “fragile.”
“American Canto” is now available on Amazon.
“I need you to take a bullet for me,” he said. “If it’s just sex, I can survive it.” He also read Nuzzi a message he sent to Lizza, accusing him of breaching their privacy and stalking her.
He threatened to contact the FBI and then called her a stalker, she says. “I’m sorry. I had to exculpate myself,” he told her.
Nuzzi has since relocated to Malibu, CA., and was hired as West Coast Editor at Vanity Fair, though that position may now be in doubt.
Even after losing her fiancé, her residence, and her job, the author says she still kept tabs on Kennedy’s confirmation hearing and was stunned to receive a message from his bodyguard after all that had happened.
“Just, well, he’s sorry,” the bodyguard said. “I told him to let me handle this. I need you to read between the lines.”
Perhaps a little humbled, Nuzzi concludes: “A politician’s greatest deception is convincing you that he is not one. And what a politician is? Any man who longs to be loved more than others, and through that pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.”
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