If there is news that arouses the interest of public opinion, especially in the United States, it is those that relate power and sex. And if a long-standing surname appears in the equation, like Kennedy, the news will go viral. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of the legendary JFK and third of the eleven children of Robert F. Kennedyis dealing these days with one of those scandals that lack no ingredient to fascinate the audience: politician of the Kennedy family, seventy years old, and happily married, until now, to the actress Cheryl Hines, he has a relationship – yes not physical, but very intense, as we will narrate later – with the star journalist of the magazine New York Magazineforty years younger than him. Whoever was Olivia Nuzzi’s fiancé, another media star, Ryan Lizza, discovers the relationship, gets carried away by anger and jealousy…and the bomb explodes.
© Getty ImagesThis 2024 is being especially complicated for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A month ago, a first scandal broke, when he resigned from his electoral campaign as an independent candidate for the presidency of his country and announced his support for Donald Trump. As soon as his decision was made public, five of his brothers wrote a joint statement of repudiation: “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and family hold most dear.” And just, at this moment of family tensionsand extreme vulnerability, a jilted boyfriend, Ryan Lizza, enters the scene, who brings to light the relationship, branded as “inappropriate”, between the veteran politician and the fashionable political analyst.
The third in contention
On September 19, strange movements began that suggested that a political scandal was brewing in the heart of the country. New York Magazine issued a statement to report that its correspondent in Washington, the epicenter of the political ins and outs of the United States, Olivia Nuzzi, had acknowledged that she had a relationship “with a relevant subject of the 2025 campaign while she was reporting on the issue.” . This represented “a violation of the journal’s standards due to conflicts of interest.”
The prestigious magazine undertook an investigation to determine whether the information provided by Olivia Nuzzi throughout the campaign was inaccurate, or was carried away by the bias of subjectivity, in light of the relationship that she herself had confirmed and that, as it turned out, , had been extended from December 2023 to this month of August. The big question, however, remains the following: why did both the protagonist of the news and the magazine make public a scandal that did not benefit them in any way?
© Getty ImagesAnd here the third party appears, Ryan Lizza, Politico journalist and Olivia Nuzzi’s fiancé. He was the one who informed David Haskell, the all-powerful editor of New York Magazine, of the flirtation between his girlfriend and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and who is currently being denounced before American justice by Olivia Nuzzi. Nuzzi went to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to accuse Lizza of having provided her bosses with “harmful information” that, on the other hand, Lizza would have obtained through illicit means – including hacking her electronic devices and manipulating them to monitor her. all her steps and movements–Likewise, Olivia Nuzzi assured that, since mid-August, she received threats from her “ex” to “make public personal information” about her “to destroy my life, my career and my reputation, a threat that has been fulfilled.”
For his part, Ryan Lizza, a fifty-year-old political analyst with a long career behind him, is a well-known and powerful journalist, who has already faced other scandals over the decades. In the shadow of MeToo, he was accused of sexual misconduct and, after a decade of working at The New Yorker, he was fired for the information he disclosed. At that time, many colleagues supported him and he once again raised his faltering career, but this time in the pages of Political. In the face of Olivia Nuzzi’s complaints, he has not remained silent: “It saddens me that my ‘ex’ fiancee resorts to making a series of false accusations against me as a way to divert attention from her own personal and professional failures. “I strongly deny these allegations and will vigorously and successfully defend myself against them.” On the other hand, he has reached an agreement with the media outlet for which he currently works and, while the investigation is underway, he will enjoy a leave of absence from work: “Político and Ryan Lizza have mutually agreed that the best thing for everyone is that he “Step back and take a leave of absence while an investigation is carried out.”
© Getty ImagesThe facts
As for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he has denied the existence of an inappropriate “personal relationship” with Olivia Nuzzi. As one of his legal representatives told NBC News: “Mr. Kennedy has only met with Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which resulted in a defamatory article.” In his last public appearances, and every time he has been questioned about Olivia Nuzzi, he has always answered in the same way: “I don’t make comments on it.” That is, without comments.
Olivia Nuzzi, perhaps pressured by the alleged threats from her “ex”, did confirm in media such as The Times that he had had a relationship with “a character in a report, which became something personal,” although he did not reveal it to his superiors because “I did not report directly on the subject nor did I use him as a source. The relationship was never physical, but should have been revealed to avoid an apparent conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and I apologize to those I disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York Magazine”.
If the relationship was not physical, what are we talking about? According to American media, Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. communicated via FaceTime and through endless text messages. Apparently, their relationship, although in cybernetic times, was more platonic and epistolary than anything else, but enough for the storm to rage on them with force.
© Getty ImagesFor the moment, and while the investigation continues, and the protagonists of the news recover their lost stability, several questions are circulating in the newsrooms of half the world. Especially those relating to Cheryl Hines, the politician’s wife. Robert F. Kennedy Jr and the television actress – nominated for two Emmys for her role in the series Curb your Enthusiasm– they married in 2014, although they had known each other since 2004. They were friends for years, until she divorced her husband, Paul Young. Then, as she herself said, she began to see the politician with other eyes, those of love. After the scandal, Cheryl Hines remains silent, although, probably, as usually happens in these cases, the procession will go internally and decisions will be left for when the matter cools down.
The “Kennedy Curse”
The Kennedys have been, for decades, the closest thing to a Royal Family in the United States. Of Irish origin – the first Kennedys to set foot on American soil were Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, in 1849 – their ambition and intelligence made them enter politics and hold more and more power. The summit took place in the sixties of last year. Patriarch Joseph and his wife, philanthropist Rose Fitzgerald, had nine children. Among them, three fundamental names for understanding the contemporary political history of the United States: John, Robert and Ted; the first, President of his country, and Robert and Ted, senators.
© Getty ImagesAlways in the eye of the hurricane, the Kennedys have been part of some of the most exciting political intrigues of the century and, also, of misfortunes of such magnitude that it has come to speak of “the curse of the Kennedys.” As a button demonstrates: on Wikipedia there is the entry “Kennedy curse” that includes more than twenty chapters ranging from the lobotomy of Rose Marie Kennedy, in the 1940s, to the drowning death of Maeve KcKean, grandniece. of JFK, and his son Gideon, in Maryland, last 2020, without forgetting, of course, the assassination of JFK, that of Robert Kennedy and the tragic death, after a plane crash, of John John Kennedy and his wife, Carolyn, in 1999.
On the other hand, among the stories that link her attractiveness and power with romantic-sexual scandals, how can we forget Marilyn Monroe singing, in 1962, “Happy Birthday” to John F. Kennedy, president of the United States? Historic moment that synthesizes a family’s passion for beauty and politics.
