Sex poetry and brain worms: The RFK 'love triangle' shocking America - The Saturday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A new book by New York Magazine’s former star political writer, Olivia Nuzzi, has unleashed a chaotic slew of revelations about her alleged transgressive relationships with wayward politicians — and the US is hooked. But how did this increasingly bizarre he-said she-said story of conflicting accounts unfold? And what does it tell us about the nexus between politics and journalism - between power and those who are supposed to hold it to account in modern America?
Guest: Will Pavia, New York Correspondent, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
Read more:
- The Olivia Nuzzi saga is Nora Ephron’s Heartburn for our social media age
- Brain worms and blue eyes: the RFK love triangle shocking America
Clips: ABC, The Hill, Siriusxm, NY Post, The Bulwark.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Saturday. I'm Manvine Rana. |
| 0:10.2 | It's the political scandal that's captivated the U.S. |
| 0:15.7 | As unbelievable as it is, I loved him, right? And I cared about him. |
| 0:21.0 | Olivia Nunesi, the disgrace ex-Newark magazine reporter who had a bombshell sexting affair with the now |
| 0:26.5 | Secretary of Health and Human Services. |
| 0:29.2 | This is... |
| 0:29.8 | I think you were bringing this to my attention. Quite a mess. |
| 0:32.3 | I'm going to be honest, like, I think half the people we have in office right now have probably cheated on their spouses. |
| 0:37.7 | It's not ideal, but like this whole saga. |
| 0:41.5 | Like, it's all anybody can discuss. |
| 0:43.7 | The former Washington correspondent for New York Magazine, Olivia Nutsi, has just released her memoir, American Canto, in which she talks obliquely about the affair she says she had with the politician, |
| 0:57.8 | a man everyone knows to be Robert Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services. |
| 1:05.0 | If that wasn't scandalous enough, Olivia Nutsi's former fiancé is having his own say. |
| 1:11.9 | Ryan Liza, the ex-fiancee of former New York magazine writer Olivia Nucie, is alleging that |
| 1:17.1 | Nusie had an affair. |
| 1:18.4 | Lizza writes, quote, my heart stopped when I realized who he was. |
| 1:21.9 | She had crossed a journalistic red line. |
| 1:24.2 | How could you write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual |
| 1:27.8 | relationship with one of the candidates? But this isn't just another tawdry sex scandal in |
| 1:33.1 | Washington, D.C. After weeks of the competitive publishing of multiple accounts of the |
| 1:42.9 | alleged affair, what emerges is a damning |
| 1:46.2 | indictment of the nexus between politics and journalism, between power and those who are supposed |
... |
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