Roses are red / RFK’s eyes are blue/ he loves “Livvy”/ But her editors have no clue!
Disgraced ex-New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi has claimed in her forthcoming memoir that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told her he loved her and wrote her poems during their racy sexting affair — as she revealed the body parts they liked most about each other.
The 32-year-old political reporter, whose promising career imploded when the scandal broke last year, divulges intimate new details about their emotionally-charged, never-physical romance — including that Kennedy gave her the nickname “Livvy” and proclaimed that he’d “take a bullet” for her.
Former New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi outlined in her new book that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told her he loved her first amid their so-called sexting affair. Getty Images for Vox Media
Things got so intense that President Trump’s now-health secretary also told the then-engaged journalist he wanted her to have his baby, according to a New York Times profile, titled “Olivia Nuzzi Did It All for Love,” which previews part of her book.
The bombshell tell-all — titled “American Canto” — refers to RFK Jr., 71, as “the politician” and details how their digital dalliance blossomed into a hot-and-heavy genuine connection after she wrote an article about him in October 2023, when he was still a presidential candidate.
In the book, Nuzzi wrote that RFK Jr.’s nose was her favorite part of his body and described his eyes as “blue as the flame.”
The Kennedy scion, for his part, loved her mouth.
In the book, Nuzzi wrote that she loved his nose the most and described RFK Jr.’s eyes as “blue as the flame.” Getty Images
She also gushed that the decades-older married politician was so sensitive that “the sight of something as trivial as a rose” could bring him to tears.
She even adored his “particular complications and particular darkness,” she wrote.
The unlikely lovebirds eventually exchanged “I love yous” — with Kennedy saying it first and Nuzzi taking more time.
“I love him, I thought. Oh no. I love him so much,” she wrote.
They spoke so often, and with such intimacy, she sometimes saw Kennedy flossing his teeth next to a toiletry bag full of prescription meds.
The bombshell book — titled “American Canto” — only refers to RFK Jr., 71, as “the politician” but details how their fling quickly developed after she wrote an article about him in late 2023. Amazon
She often gave him campaign advice, including how to handle the bizarre story of how he dumped a dead bear in Central Park more than a decade ago.
Nuzzi goes on to insist she didn’t care about their age gap because they shared “common language, common skepticisms, common ideas about what was beautiful, common beliefs about what was valuable.”
She wrote that they “moved through the world with amused detachment and deep sensitivity, contradictions that worked somehow in concert.”
But when news of their sexting affair broke, Kennedy had a bizarre, self-absorbed response, according to the Times profile.
“If it’s just sex, I can survive it,” the politician told her in September 2024 — in an apparent reference to his political career.
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Nuzzi told him she would do whatever he needed her to do as the scandal unfolded, she wrote, including ultimately taking a figurative bullet for him a month later — her job at New York Magazine.
She was also dumped by her then-fiance, fellow political reporter Ryan Lizza — who previously claimed in court papers that Nuzzi painted Kennedy as manipulative because of the “huge power disparity.”
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (C) and his wife Cheryl Hines (L) arrive for Daniel Noboa’s presidential inauguration at National Assembly building on May 24, 2025 in Quito, Ecuador. Getty Images
What we know about Olivia Nuzzi’s relationship with RFK Jr.
New York magazine’s star political correspondent Olivia Nuzzi was placed on leave over an alleged ‘sexting’ relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The reporter admitted to a non-physical “personal relationship” with Kennedy scion.
Nuzzi, 31, penned a profile on Kennedy, 70, that was published in November 2023, and sometime after that, the two reportedly began their alleged fling.
Nuzzi’s fiancé, Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza, announced the couple had ended their engagement on Friday.
Lizza said at the time that Nuzzi described John F. Kennedy’s nephew as “70-year-old ‘sex addict’ who told her he wanted to ‘possess,’ ‘control,’ and ‘impregnate’ her.”
While Nuzzi’s book doesn’t directly address whether she had sex with Kennedy, she has denied it in the past.
“The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict,” Nuzzi said in a statement after their sexting was exposed last year. “I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
“We were not sleeping together,” she later said in an interview, according to The Times.
Through a spokesman in September 2024, Kennedy denied having an inappropriate relationship with Nuzzi.
He did not respond when The Post reached out to the Health and Human Services department Friday.
“I never comment on those kind of stories,” Kennedy said when asked about the affair on “The Story With Martha MacCallum.”
The scandal sent Nuzzi fleeing to Los Angeles where she holed up for a year to secretly write “American Canto.” She recently landed a job as Vanity Fair’s new West Coast editor.
“I had a healthy appreciation for the fact that what had happened was not purely a tragedy,” she told the Times.
Ryan Lizza, Olivia Nuzzi and Oliver Stone attends the screening of “Nuclear Now” at Arleigh and Roberta Burke Theater on May 01, 2023 in Washington, DC. Getty Images for Nuclear Now
All the while, she was duking it out with Lizza in legal salvos — him branding her a shameless “liar” and her accusing him of blackmail, which he denied. She eventually withdrew a protective order she’d taken out against him.
Lizza told the Times that his ex made “false and defamatory allegations” and that she “refused to defend” them.
In the meantime, Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines, 60, has seemingly stood by him.
The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star, who sources said was initially weighing divorce, has repeatedly been spotted by her husband’s side since the saga erupted.
While Nuzzi’s relationship imploded, the MAHA leader’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines, 60, has seemingly stood by him. Getty Images
She touched on how the “press was running wild” with the news of Nuzzi and RFK’s sexting scandal in her memoir, “Unscripted” — which dropped this month.
“I’m sure I wasn’t seeing the full scope of the coverage, but I was seeing most of it. Of course, I hated all of it. The swirl of headlines, rumors, and insinuations was upsetting and overwhelming. I had hit a wall,” Hines wrote in the book, according to People Magazine.
Nuzzi gained notoriety in the New York City political sphere when she penned a scathing first-person piece for the New York Daily News on what it was like interning on then-mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s campaign in 2013.
She was immediately slammed as a “s–tbag” by Weiner’s flak for the front-page story, in which she claimed interns were only working for the failed pol to get close to his well-connected then-wife Huma Abedin.
She went on to work at The Daily Beast, writing about President Trump full-time at just 22, and then landed a cushy gig at New York Magazine as its first-ever Washington correspondent.
“A politician’s greatest trick is to convince you that he is not one,” Nuzzi says in her book, due out on Dec. 2. “And what is a politician? Any man who wants to be loved more than other men and through his pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.”