![\"Robert](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Robert-F.-Kennedy-Jr.-and-Olivia-Nuzzi.jpg\")
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Olivia Nuzzi (Getty Images)\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n
But journalist and podcaster Maureen Callahan, who penned a book about Kennedy women, believes she knows why the 60-year-old Hines probably won\u2019t leave Kennedy, 71.<\/a> For one thing, he\u2019s one of the most powerful politicians in the country right now: As Donald Trump\u2019s Health and Human Services secretary, he oversees the health care of more than 300 million Americans. In addition, Kennedy also happens to be \u201ca member of America\u2019s quote, unquote royal family,\u201d Callahan, the author of \u201cAsk Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed,\u201d said on her \u201cThe Nerve\u201d podcast.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n According to Callahan, Hines probably wants continued access to the Kennedy family\u2019s wealth and fame, even though a number of Kennedy relatives, including Caroline Kennedy, have denounced her husband\u2019s vaccine skepticism and cuts to public health, his alliance with Trump and his \u201caddiction to attention and power.\u201d<\/p>\n In her book and interviews to promote it, Hines revealed her adoration for the son of Robert F. Kennedy, according to Callahan. She \u201cseems to be head over heels (in love) with him\u201d and is probably willing to believe whatever he\u2019s told her in his efforts to downplay or deny his alleged affair with Nuzzi, Callahan said.<\/p>\n But as Callahan said, it\u2019s hard to imagine many wives ignoring the detailed allegations about Kennedy Jr. that have emerged via Nuzzi\u2019s book and in Lizza\u2019s Substack dispatches.<\/a><\/p>\n In her book, Nuzzi alleges that Kennedy \u2014 whom she obliquely refers to as \u201cThe Politician\u201d \u2014 expressed an obsessive need for her, even though they reportedly never consummated their relationship, according to the New York Post <\/a>and the Daily Mail.<\/a> They met in 2023 after she was assigned to do a cover story about him for New York magazine. At the time, he was running for president, first as a Democrat, then as an Independent. They began their \u201cdigital affair,\u201d communicating via text or FaceTime. She said he called her \u201cbabydoll\u201d and \u201cbaby love\u201d and spoke about wanting to impregnate her, denied that he was ever infected with a parasitic brain worm<\/a> and described using hallucinogenic drugs when Hines was out of town, the New York Post also reported. During a video call to Nuzzi on his 10th wedding anniversary, Kennedy turned over a framed photo of himself with his wife.<\/p>\n \u201cYou give me a deep-seated yearning, gnawing hunger\u2026 I need everything from you,\u201d Nuzzi said Kennedy Jr. once messaged her, the Daily Mail reported.<\/p>\n But Nuzzi\u2019s revelations about Kennedy seem anticlimactic following the even more seamy stories shared by Lizza on his Telos News Substack posts. The former New Yorker and Politico writer said he decided to spill details about his relationship with Nuzzi in order to counter her narrative about their breakup. Lizza said he kicked Nuzzi out after he learned of her affair with Kennedy in the late summer of 2024.<\/p>\n Nuzzi also was fired by New York Magazine, and was hoping for a journalistic comeback as the West Coast editor with Vanity Fair. But that job is reportedly up in the air, after Lizza\u2019s Substack posts revealed Nuzzi\u2019s alleged serious violations of journalistic ethics in her relationship with Kennedy, Page Six reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Substack, LIzza said Nuzzi and Kennedy planned to consummate their relationship in August 2024<\/a>, after Kennedy ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. Lizza also shared Nuzzi\u2019s claims that Kennedy was a \u201csex addict\u201d who had been having multiple affairs with unidentified woman during their alleged digital affair. Lizza moreover published erotic poetry<\/a> that he said Kennedy texted to Nuzzi, including one string of text that described a certain raunchy sex act.<\/p>\n \u201cI am a river. You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love,\u201d Kennedy Jr. wrote, according to Lizza\u2019s Nov. 21 Substack post.<\/p>\n With such disclosures, Callahan declared: \u201cCheryl, pick up your pride, wherever you left it. Pick up your dignity. \u2026 And get a shark of a lawyer and leave this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n On her show, Callahan and her producer, Marlaina Schiavo, also discussed their theories about Hines\u2019 attachment to Kennedy.<\/p>\n According to Hines\u2019 memoir, she grew up in \u201chumble beginnings\u201d and at one point lived in a trailer park, Schiavo said. \u201cNow she has an invitation to the Cape,\u201d Schiavo said. Hines became a B-list TV celebrity with \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm\u201d but her marriage to Kennedy \u201ctook it to the next level\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s kind of hard to downshift once you get there, right?\u201d Schiavo added.<\/p>\n Callahan said her reporting on Kennedy women showed that the \u201calpha Kennedy men\u201d liked to marry their groupies. and Hines, too, \u201cis a fan,\u201d which means she will put up with \u201call manner of humiliation, infidelity and risk to her health and reputation.\u201d But to such women, \u201cbeing a Kennedy wife is worth it,\u201d Callahan said.<\/p>\n But Callahan said she\u2019s not inclined to be sympathetic to anyone in the sex quadrangle, including Hines, noting that she flaunted her relationship with Kennedy Jr. and his children while he was still married, though separated, from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Before she died by suicide in 2012, Richardson Kennedy famously found her husband\u2019s sex diary in which he admitted to having \u201clust demons\u201d and \u201cwild impulses,\u201d while listing 37 women with whom he said he had some kind of sexual relationship.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Mary Richardson Kennedy was decompensating, (Hines) was awful to her,\u201d Callahan said. That said, if Hines were smart, she would regard leaving Kennedy as finally \u201cliberating herself.\u201d<\/p>\n Hines also could be welcomed back in the Hollywood fold by by her liberal friends, who mostly rejected her after she joined her husband\u2019s alliance with Trump, Callahan said. She just needs to renounce her husband, Trump and the MAGA movement and say she was \u201cbrainwashed,\u201d Callahan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cheryl Hines\u2019 apparent willingness to stand by her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is becoming increasingly surreal as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,94059,166692,94060,88,2558,149,206,2413,3,111,2628,17866],"class_list":["post-327860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-alert","tag-celebrity-politics","tag-coffee-break","tag-entertainment","tag-latest-headlines","tag-lifestyle","tag-movies","tag-national-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-things-to-do","tag-tv-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"JOINT](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/HInesRedCross.jpeg\")
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, MARYLAND – DECEMBER 01: Cheryl Hines, the wife of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., participates in a Red Cross holiday care package event inside a hangar on December 1, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. The event is part of the American Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces (SAF), which supports the military, veterans and their families. (Photo by Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images)\u00a0<\/p>\n