The Bulwark Podcast - Olivia Nuzzi Breaks Her Silence

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

There are no shortage of scandals plaguing Washington D.C. right now. One that has captivated much of the political and media professions involves Olivia Nuzzi, a political writer formerly of the magazine New York, and now an editor with Vanity Fair, who was involved in a relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the 2024 campaign. Nuzzi’s relationship has provided incredible fodder for the press, not least because her ex-fiance, Ryan Lizza, has penned a multi-part series on the matter where he has unspooled numerous accusations against her and RFK Jr., in anticipation of the publication of Nuzzi’s book, American Canto, which was released Tuesday. Those accusations are quite serious, many of which Nuzzi addresses in her book, including an admission that she secretly aided RFK Jr.’s campaign. The more important ones, however, deal with RFK Jr. himself, including the charge that he has hid drug use and was both manipulative of and threatening to Nuzzi during their relationship. Nuzzi has not discussed any of it on camera. Until now. In a sit down interview with Tim Miller, she talked about the ethical breaches that cost her her job, the conflict between her responsibilities as a reporter, the private relationship that blurred those boundaries, and the fear and isolation she experienced as the scandal unfolded. She describes withdrawing from the world, fleeing across the country, and trying to rebuild her sense of self while contending with public shaming and, what she saw as, the “weaponization” of her personal life against her. She also offers some insights and revelations regarding the now Health and Human Service secretary, who has denied the relationship. She and Tim discuss her relationship with RFK Jr. and the wreckage that followed, whether he continues to use drugs while occupying a cabinet post, what type of threats she felt, and why she didn’t feel compelled to speak up as it became clear that Kennedy was ascending to remarkable heights of political power. They also discuss the broader political moment that shaped all of it: the Trump era’s constant tug between reality and spectacle, the corrosion of public trust, and the ways journalists become characters in the dramas they cover. And they broach one of the more understated questions throughout this entire, sordid ordeal: why even bother writing this book to begin with? Nuzzi explains that writing was an act of survival and the clarity that came from separating herself from Washington, D.C.’s rituals and delusions. Along the way, she says, she became further entrenched in the delusions she was hoping to escape. show notes Buy American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi

Hello and welcome to a bonus edition of the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. You might have heard of her. She was Washington correspondent for New York Magazine for a while, and she has a new book out today titled American Canto. It's Olivia Nutsi. How you doing, girl? I'm good.

How are you? Well, I'm doing pretty good. I didn't have to publish a newsletter today where I discussed all the ways my book rollout was going awry, highlighting the fact that Monica Lewinsky keeps checking in on me. So, I don't know. She's so nice. She's so nice. She's incredibly kind. But, yeah, that's a good indicator that the public, it's sort of the Lewinsky scale of kindness.

It's like the Richter scale. For public shaming, I think. So, yeah, that if your agent tells you, I love you, doesn't explain why they're texting you that. I don't seem like a victory text. Has Monica offered any particular nuggets of wisdom from her experience? I don't want to violate her. I think more than the country has done for so long, but she's been really, really, really kind.

And I'm very appreciative. In some ways, she benefited from being pre-internet. really a little bit of a different animal well but it was sort of the first internet based shaming right when you think about it probably I think I wasn't cognizant at the time but it's true I guess it was drudge it's a little different than the minute by minute the second by second blow by blow that you're into I want to um start a saying to you when we decided to do this I just kind of want to like pretend like I just bumped into you at a hotel and ask like all of the burning questions I have about how this came to pass because we haven't like

talked all that much. I was a little bit from time to time texting over the past year. And I think my first question would just be like, why did you decide to do this, right? Like, why did you write this? You could have just, I don't know. I mean, you did kind of disappear for a year. He could have wrote under a nom de plume. Could have done anything.

You decided to do this. What was the, why did you do it? Well, I just, I was writing. I'm always writing. Like, I remember when my, when my dad died, I came home. And that night I sat there and I wrote his obituary. And, like, for me, I think it's just a way of establishing sort of, um, the contours of reality, you know, to get down everything that can be stated for certain and I have a better idea that way of what cannot be stated for certain. And so I guess it's just what I'm always doing.

And then what I was writing started to take on this kind of shape, and I had a sense of what I thought maybe it was becoming or revealing. And I sent some of it to my editor, Jofi, at Avid Rader Press. And he just responded, I get it. And that was sort of all I needed to hear. And I'm not much of a planner, if you can believe it. And there was no, like, sitting down like, oh, what do I, what do I do, right? There were a lot of people telling me, oh, just keep going, right, cover the end of the election, take some other assignment.

Like, be shameless because everyone else involved is shameless. And you should be shameless too. But I think shame is really important. And I had fucked up, right? I did something wrong, like those ethics rules. exist for a reason they're really good roles and I had violated that and it struck me that like it's not like you just wake up one day and you make a big mistake right it had to have been many imperceptible errors that like contributed to really just a a malformed perspective that that

led to that type of mistake and I took it really seriously you know and I thought it was like this big important spiritual event in my life that I didn't want to just pretend that it didn't happen. I didn't, at first it's like an intoxicating thought, you know, like, oh, could I just do that? And then immediately it's just, no, of course I can't do that and live it myself. And so I just sort of wrote and fought and tried to like stay out of trouble and don't stay out of sleep. I don't know if you achieved that part. Well, I did, but that's the thing. It's like I don't want to allow someone else's chaos that they're stirring up to be put on me.

You know, I did, right? I wrote this book. It's about America. It's about ideas. It's about the last 10 years in America and reality distorting. What other people are talking about opportunistically in this discourse. is not what this book is about. And so that's someone else's trouble.

I mean, there's so much there. I have like 18 follow-up questions, so we'll just kind of take them one at a time. I think you're kind of pitching the letters to a young poet. It's Rilke where he says, I write because I must. Like there's that kind of element. I write that's just because that's what I do. I write.

I'm pitching it. Yeah. No, not pitching it. And there's that kind of reasoning for doing this, which makes sense. In the book you write about. the editor that you had told you that you should try to write your way out of your problem, write your way. At New York Magazine, that was presented to me as sort of a way to keep my job rather than

what happened if I wrote some sort of tell-all, yeah. Yeah, but this doesn't really feel like that, right? And this, like in some ways, you tell some stuff about RFK, which we get into, and you tell some stuff about your life and you reflect, but it doesn't feel like you're trying to write your way out of trouble. No, I mean, I wrote, in some way, I think I wrote myself further into it, right? Because I reveal things that people didn't even know I did wrong, but that it felt to me, like, important if I was going to write a book like this. I wanted people to, I guess, know what they were dealing with.

Or I didn't see any value in trying to, like, spin it in some way to make me look good. There was no me looking good in that situation, right? And I think I'm always trying to just talk to the smartest person in the room, right? To talk to the person reading who is, to me, smartest means the most open-minded, right? The most interested in or capable of holding nuance, the most curious. and I knew that there would be like a tabloid cannibalization and a media like naval gazing interpretation and that all of that would probably be you know like it typically is but I was just writing the book that but I felt I had a responsibility to write creatively and spiritually

and like with my time here and I took really seriously I got very upset at a certain point when they sent the books to print it occurred to me just how serious it is to kill so many trees

to print your book and I got very upset and every time I would ask Simon & Schuster about well how many trees exactly is that they would send me this they would send me this propaganda back about how many trees Simon & Schuster plants every year. And I was like, well, I didn't ask how many you planted. I asked how many

you killed. But I just, I didn't want to waste anybody's time or waste any trees. And I took that really seriously. And like I, it's not an effort to, um, to like brand myself in any particular way, you know. I went back and rewatch. You interviewed me after I wrote my book, which was a big kind of reflection on, like, my failings. I love that book. Thank you. And I rewatched the interview, just kind of see what we talked about, like, refresh my memory. And you were kind of struck by how bleak I was, like, and about the state of affairs,

like bleak about, you know, politics, about Washington, like, kind of bleak about myself. And your book wasn't really that bleak, like, really? I mean, like, there are bleak parts, you know, but, like, you really try. it feels like to, to, you know, talk about what you got out of this. And, like, you talk about God and spirituality way more than I remember you talking about it. Maybe you just don't talk about it with me because I'm a heathen gay. I don't know. But, like, I don't know.

I guess my question is going through this whole, like, terribleness. You've now mentioned spirituality twice in the podcast. It's like, do you feel like you've found something? Yeah, I'm going to rebrand to, like, be a tradwife or something. I don't know. There's a lot of God. You're capitalizing God in the book. You'll catch me at CPAC.

No. I mean, I never had really written anything personal before. You know, the work was always subjective, right? Because that type of work is subjective. But it was rarely personal. Like, occasionally I would write in, like, something would happen. My mom happened to die when I was with Jill Biden at a hospital. not the right hospital.

And, you know, I worked that into the piece. There's a little bit there. But typically when I, I always thought that if I was really in a piece, it was a process failure. And I guess this has been the ultimate process failure. And so I'm in the book a lot, right? But I had never really, you know, written about those things. And I guess I, I didn't think about how to explain it. I guess I felt like,

With the rapturous events of last year and with the big crashout, there was an enormous opportunity before me that I shouldn't waste. And that opportunity was about figuring out what I had done wrong and how it had come to be that I had made this mistake and assessing what had gone wrong and taking it seriously. And if I did that, right, and if I, like, made it through this dishonor in an honorable way, if I didn't try to use anyone as a human shield, you know, if I didn't try to say, oh, you know, it wasn't so bad or it wasn't a big deal, or then hopefully I'd be able to proceed better than I was living before and that I had led me to failure, right? And so I guess that's where that comes from. I kind of hard did you find it to do that to insert yourself into this and to write about yourself and not when you unstruck like look every I guess maybe not every single person but many of us myself included loved your like political profiles and there's always this kind of irreverence to them and kind of a wry dispassionate assessment of the silliness and the

vipishness of it all and yeah right and that's hard to do when you're like looking at yourself and assessing your own mistakes and do you want to take that seriously? I'm wondering, as you've seen, some of the reviews of the book and stuff, like some people's criticism is that that's kind of hard to bridge, right? That if you're going to look at everybody else

kind of like a mocking, a reverent lens, and then look at yourself very seriously, like it's hard to bridge those two. Did you struggle with that? I don't think I'm looking at, well, I think I mocked myself rather a lot, right? I mean, I published a list today, a day of publication of my book

about everything that's gone wrong with the publication of this book, right? But I don't think that I look at people in the way that you describe. Maybe mocking was probably unfair, but irreverent. Like, there was a puckishness to it. There's a puckishness to your writing about other people, you know? Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I don't know. I don't, that kind of sounds like not my business if people feel that way about the book.

I wasn't really trying to do anything in this book other than write something honest and be honest about my experiences and how it felt and what had happened and how I was kind of putting it in context and I didn't see a way around it, right? Like, it's a necessary context from my perspective this last year and from the perspective and the vantage point from which I was writing this book was on the periphery pretty far from the story I've been covering geographically and in every other way. And it was that perspective that allowed me to complete this thought that I had begun forming when I first started writing about Donald Trump 10 years earlier. And it was also that perspective that allowed me. I felt like, I don't know if you felt like this, but I felt like I was covering this world and associating with people in this world for a really long time. And I had just ceased to be able to see it clearly in some ways.

Like I just was too, it was too familiar. And I write about that, about how something can become, you know, so familiar that it's foreign. And it really wasn't until I fled and, you know, ended up on the wrong side of the country at the end of the election that I felt like I could get a hold of it. Yeah, I mean, I obviously felt that way. And I don't know, like one way out of it for me was, I just decided that, like, the only way to deal with, like, all of the, like, bullshitting and all of the unreality of this kind of world that Donald Trump has created was to just be, like, completely myself and just be totally radically candid about what I think about it and fuck it, like, whatever. And the world would be damned. And, like, it's kind of hard to do that as a journalist.

I'm not a journalist, right? So we had a different challenge. And I felt like that was freeing for me. And I wonder, you know, for you, as you kind of looked at this process, like, whether, like, you felt like you were able to do that. Like, you were able to, like, be... What sounds like you think I wasn't? Well, it's okay. I guess here's what I'd say.

I don't know if you were, if you weren't, I guess would be my answer to the question. Because I think that, like, the way that the book is written, there are parts of it that are, like, so beautiful and elegant and interesting. and they are, you know, it peaks curiosity in various ways. You know, you write it. So, like, the politicians don't have names. You know, at times, like, you write about the politician and the Maga General and stuff. And so there is this element to it that's still a little, like, mysterious, right? And there are parts where you're, like, I mean, just unbelievably vulnerable, like, talking about your parents' death and talking about RFK.

But yet, like, at the end of it, I still kind of felt like, I don't know what she really thinks about all of this that has happened that she's covered for the last 10 years. Maybe she's trying to tell me and I just can't, I can't quite grasp it. I think, you know, there's that cliche to show and not tell when you write. And I have always tried to abide by that. And I felt here, I mean, I think that my worldview is reflected in all manner of ways that I write about. you know, immigration, the border that I write about January 6th. I mean, so much of the book really comes back to January 6th.

I don't think it's like a mystery. And I think the details that I include and the kind of that form this portraiture of the characters that you refer to, I think, however you feel about it as a reader, at the end, it is correct. You know, I can't tell you how to feel, and I wouldn't. But I can tell you what I experienced and when I saw and what I heard and what it felt like, you know. Yeah, and I guess that is what I was sort of trying to get back to with the question about Rilke's kind of writing because you must versus like trying to write out of this, right? Because that was a choice, right?

You could write a book that had these various pastis and that you, you know, kind of expressed how you felt about the moments and leave people still a little bit, you know, the mystery that comes with that kind of writing, right? Like, or you could have ripped a Band-Aid off and said, no, you'd done a real tell-all, right? You could have ripped a Band-Aid off and said, no, this is what really happened. This is what I think about Bobby. But I did. I did rip the Band-Aid off emotionally, right? I don't think that there was any real value in sharing my opinions about things, right? But my assessments and my descriptions and my, the way that I reveal character, I do think is valuable, right?

That's the sort of privilege afforded to people who cover this sort of stuff in general or the kind of cursed privilege, I suppose, of having been as stupid as I was and getting admired in a situation, which might be. And this point was different than it should have been, right? Is that I had, I have a perspective informed in ways that other people could not possibly be informed. And I have a responsibility to, to share about that. I thought there was value in that. I didn't think that there was value for anything other than the immediate discourse, right? The 24-hour discourse in making big judgments.

I think that the details I include and the portraits that I paint are the judgment, you know? Right, guys, I'm not a big wallet purchaser. I've probably had, I don't know, three wallets, my entire adult life. And I had a little while where I had a Costanza wallet going. Then I decided to keep nothing in my wallet. You know, I've been all over the map. And when we got this new sponsor, Ridge, after a bet, I'm just going to admit, right off. I was a little skeptical. It's a little different than my other wallets. It's sleek.

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Head to R-I-D-G-E.com to get up to 47% off your order. This is by far the biggest discount they've given all year. That's Ridge.com for up to 47% off your order during their biggest sale of the year. After your purchase, they'll ask you, where you heard about them, please support our show and tell them we sent you. I think that what some folks would say particularly from like the journalism lens, the questions would be like not like, oh, I'm looking for Olivia Nutsi's punditry on every single thing that HHS has done, right? But more like, do we exactly know like the extent of what happened, right? Like one of the stories that's come up, for example, that's in the book, you write about when I forget what magazine was either New York or New York magazine who's going to write about the bear? story where Bobby had taken a bear off the side of the road and left it in Central Park,

I guess. And you said that you had like kind of. Yeah, as you do. Right. I had a lot of follow-up questions about that, like when he washed his hands and stuff. But like that's kind of for another podcast. But he says he gets on a plane after. And I'm like, the poor person's sitting next to him.

But you talk about how you kind of figured out for him that like that story was going to run and you talked to him about it and then gave him some advice on how to handle it. and he didn't take the advice, and, like, that all was happening, like, where you're still covering the campaign, right? And so, like, that question of, like, you know, for people, and you're talking about telling, like, how much, like, were you giving him advice on how to, you know, were you helping him? I write about that in the book, about, you know, when he would ask my opinion or ask for advice, my approach was Socratic, mostly, right?

And I would just help him talk it out. And that any time I gave prescriptive advice, he never took it, right? But I didn't really, I didn't view my role as telling him what to do. Like, as unbelievable as it is, I loved him, right? And I cared about him. And I didn't, you know, I didn't think that, I just didn't think it was my place to tell him what to do. And I wouldn't have wanted to tell him what to do anyhow. But I also, I think I was just operating under this delusion that because he was so on the periphery, right?

Because what he was doing seemed so irrelevant. And his polling was so low. And it was getting lower, right? In the time from when I had written about him, I think the polling went from like a one-off, 20% poll down to like 3% on average. And so I, it didn't feel like, you know, the one time, for whatever it was, the one time it came up at New York Magazine as, you know, someone was working on something and how was I, you know, could I help them? Like, I sent them to the campaign. I also sent them to the DNC, to Liz Smith, right, who was running the campaign against him. You know, I gave insight that was not helpful at all. And it, you know, on balance affected it neutrally or negatively. But I didn't, it didn't come up really. otherwise because nobody really cared that other than when it would, you know, reach the level of meme that he, that he was running. And so I think I was able to kind of keep this diluted perspective that it was like just this, this private thing that was so irrelevant that it wasn't

going to pose any sort of problem. And then lo and behold, it unfurled in this way where it just directly collided with the main event. that I was covering, right? And I think that's like, again, where this is long after you profiled him, but you're still, as you say, you're covering the race. Like you get to the point you talk about in the book where he's like deciding who to endorse and you're kind of like you're talking back and forth about this. And I think he says it makes him feel nauseous to endorse Biden,

nauseous to endorse Trump. And I think when you're in the, you know, it was the sort of revelation of him to me. as the person that I would come to think of as the politician, it really starts there where the, when you've been in the wilderness for so long, right, when you have been irrelevant and you have not been invited to any inner circle and you have to fight to be heard or you're kind of, you're disinvited from things or deep platformed or whatever, when you were suddenly invited in, when you're suddenly being cheered for, it seemed to me that it activated this part of the personality that just, it didn't matter

where the cheering was coming from. It just mattered that it felt good to be cheered. And I, it was kind of, it was astonishing to watch, and it remains so. But in some ways, you're, like, wrapped up in that. And, right? And there's this, you talk about, like, the reality distortion field, but, like, you were writing at some point about how, like, I think you wrote, I was proud of him because I believed he believed the decision was the best means to be of service to others. Like, the decision was going to endorse Trump.

And, like, you'd covered Trump for nine years. Like, some of you had to know that that was not going to be away from. for him to serve others by going to work for Donald Trump. I also wrote about how, in helping him talk through the decision, right? I wrote about how, in my view, all of the perils of endorsing Trump, right? All of the perils of trying to work with Trump. That was all the case, obviously. It was also the case that because he has no beliefs, Trump, right?

and because he has no principles and because he really just orientes himself around power around celebrity, it is a malleable situation, or it's porous, rather, right? And the best example that I could think of was what Kim Kardashian did with criminal justice reform, right? And so I, in talking it through, you know, that was the sort of like, sure, she stood next to him, right? she risk ridicule and being made a fool of, but she did manage to get a nonviolent offenders prison term commuted. She did manage to help enact the first step back. She did manage to at least elevate this conversation at the federal level about something that I think was good. So the idea that there's never an opportunity, I think Trump's lack of any

belief system can be for someone with the correct motivations and who knows what they are doing can be an opportunity. But do you think he had the correct motivations? In that instance, right? But it didn't work out that way. No. Right. No.

Absolutely not. In retrospect, at the time, though, at the time, though, like, I read, I believed in him and I believed him. And that's not, there's no, it's not a positive thing for me to reveal, right? It's just the truth. Right. So this is the part I'm trying to process. Yeah.

So, like, you keep thinking the love part. And I hate to do this like a high school thing, but I just, I'm like trying to understand it. It's like, did you, were you, did you kiss him? I'm not doing this type of thing. Like I write about it in the book. And like I just say, just not. I'm just trying to understand. Look, we all.

I didn't write that type of book, right? I didn't. I'm not looking for, I don't want to like a list of the, like, all the, anything that you did with Bobby. I'm just trying to understand like, you say you loved him. But like, we all, I deal. this. This is not with somebody that was trying to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, but I can think back in the day when I was kissing boys and I'd think that I was in love with somebody and then you would go and you'd have a night and you'd wake up the next morning

and you're like, this was crazy. I thought I was falling in love with this person. This person's insane actually. I didn't know what I was talking about. I was infatuated. It's like that's what I'm trying to understand. Looking back on it, like, do you feel like you really were in love with him or like you just were infatuated and caught up in it? I, you know, I think we were both alone a lot, right? We were both on the road a lot. I was avoiding trying to figure out what I was doing in my personal life. I wasn't happy.

I was being a coward about it, right? And, you know, I think he didn't really have anyone who wasn't working for him that he could talk to about what he was dealing with. And I guess it was kind of formed of that mutual. isolation, the question that I, it's like, were my feelings real, if he was not real, right? If I, if I, if I, and no, I don't think so. Yeah. And so that's like the part that I'm trying. But at the time, but I'm writing about the time, right?

I'm writing about these things at the time. And so it was important to me, like my perspective is, is different now, right? And I also, I know things now that I did not know then. And I have, I just have more information now. But it was important to me to be honest about what I was feeling then. and what it felt like then, and to not rewrite that based on my present interpretation of it, right? When I'm writing about those events at that time during that campaign, I'm just writing about what happened and what it felt like. I'm not rendering a judgment about that.

And I'm not either. What I'm trying to get to is I'm trying to tie it into like, you're also writing about what happened after, right? Like after he betrays you, after he leaks about you, after he goes. you. And at that point, like, if you look back on a campaign where at some points, you were like giving him advice and running down information for him, like, was it just he was using you? Possibly. Possibly. But I reveal those things, right? Like, that's, I guess, maybe we just have different styles. Like, that's my way of telling you what I think. Yeah. We certainly have different styles and that's good because we're supposed to be different. But I'm like mad. I'm

mad at him than you are. I'm like, I'm mad at him. I'm like, fuck you, RFK. Fuck the way you treated Olivia. And fuck you what you're doing right now, honestly. And like when I'm, in the book, like, you are hard on yourself. You're hard on some other people. There are more things that I think that you could reveal about him. I would assume that you've chosen not to. And if he, if he betrayed you, why not reveal the truth about him I think I did I mean the fact that you had that reaction

tells me that I gave you enough information but have you given us enough information that is in the public interest I guess is my question right like and the New York Times asked you if he had text you

if you had released them like shouldn't you like shouldn't you just empty the clip is what I'm saying shouldn't you give people everything that you have so that we're not left to kind of like wonder. I think people have taken from me quite a lot over this process, right? It's like, how much more do I have to violate myself?

Right? And this book is not about him. No, no, no, but you are. You are, actually, right? And I had to weigh, what can I tell you and what should I tell you, right? That is in the public interest. that is not about the immediate discourse. What is important for people to understand about this?

That is not coming from my fear, from my ego, right? But that's also responsible. And I talked about what I felt like only I could talk about, right? As it relates to anything else, it's like a complicated question where you get into, what's the responsible way to handle information that you might be privy to when your conflict might render it discredited, right? Sure. And it's a complicated question, and like, one, I have a lot to say to you privately, but, like, you know.

He's the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like, I guess my point is this is what I'm not trying to take from you. Like, I don't care about your love life with any person in the private or otherwise. And if you want to gossip with me over brunch, I'm happy to do that. I hate brunch, but yeah, we can do that. Yeah, sure, over dinner, over whatever. Happy hour, late night, I'm open. I'm not a big brunch man anymore either myself.

I just like to fit into stereotypes. But, like, he's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like, you kind of allude in the book that he's doing drugs. Like, is he doing drugs? I mean, I tell you what I felt like I could tell you responsibly in the book about that. Right? I talk about him telling me that he is doing some drugs. You know, I didn't administer any drugs.

So I can only tell you so much. But I tell you when I think you should know about that. Like that's the information that I had about that, right? Him telling me that this person who says that he's sober, right? And he was telling me privately that, in fact, he was not sober. And he was hiding it, not just from the public, but from his own wife, among other things. And I write that in the book because I think it was in the public interest to do so. Right.

You mentioned TMT, but like, is he doing other drugs? He's doing ketamine? Is he doing... I mean, I think I write in the book that I had asked him about another drug. I heard that he was doing and he had emphatically denied it. But I can't say that I make much of his emphatic denial of anything. Sure. You also say at a time, like, you're afraid of him?

Were you, like, actually afraid? Like, feeling a threat. Are you referring to? Well, they were told that his bodyguard, you know, was a dangerous person. And that there were, you know, like, threats. And, like, he had a temper. And, you know, like, when during the key period where after he'd endorse. Trump, where this all comes out, obviously he's threatening, menacing you. He doesn't want you

to come public with information. Like, that's, that's pretty alarming for somebody that's the secretary, again, of health and human services. I mean, I've wrote about my experience as honestly as possible in a way that I thought served the public interest and just would be of use, maybe, right? But it's not for this immediate discourse. And I think that there's like a lot of, there's this enormous appetite for this tell-all, right? And for something that would be satisfying, I guess, to people who want to watch others get torn to shreds. But I just, I didn't have any interest in anything that was going to be worth anyone's time. And I never would have, I would just never do something like that, right?

Like, I wrote something that is about all of this is relevant in so far. is it's the necessary context for a reader, right, about who they're dealing with here as their narrator, right? I have the responsibility to be honest about that. And it's also factors in to my broader understanding of this 10-year period of Trump's rise to dominance, right? Where reality just seems to be distorting, kind of sprawling out from the center around Trump. And my job was to talk to monstrous people, including Donald Trump. out, right? And to make sense of them and translate for people who would never or could never or do that. And a lot got blurred. And so that experience with him that we're talking about,

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just in the hopes that you can maybe provide perspective on this, because I can understand, like, being in your shoes. I've been in your, not your shoes, Lord knows, but, you know. If you want, you can borrow them. Good, I might. But firestorms, you know, and it becomes, that is reality distorting, right? People are shooting on you. And like, and I think that there are people out there that just

want to hear every prurient detail of your life. There are people out there that, like, want to see you fail. There are people out there that, like, are mad at you for various things. And I can understand how one might jumble that with, like, I think that there are people out there that have, that are legitimately enraged about Bobby because he has, like, you know, they view his views on vaccine as resulting in childhood deaths. We have, since he's been in there, we've gotten rid of USAID. He's canceled funding for MNRA research.

He's purged expert scientists from the government, massive cuts to NIH research. I mean, there are people that look at him and see him as a monster. And so I'm trying to channel the frustration that they might have that you would say, well, I have other information, you know, that I'm not going to do a tell-all about everything about him. It's like, why not? But I shared everything that I felt I responsibly could share. Right. And I also, in this book, right, in this context,

I told the most honest story that I could possibly tell. And I don't think, it's hard to have this conversation in public. It's like I, because it's just. Yeah. I'm trying to think about a phrase. For instance, the person I write about is the man I did not marry. right um he can not can we just say how it is for people do you want me just to say it or will we just leave it like that it's your show i think we're talking about right she's referring for

folks who are trying to follow the character she's referring to ryan lissa who is who's written about this but he he has presented his um harassment of me right in this humiliation campaign as some sort of crusade that's in the public interest right that somehow um the country will be saved by him writing some combination of like fan fiction and revenge porn, right? And he alluded to or claimed that he was in possession of some explosive information somehow from me unclear that related to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And sick. Right? And I was just thinking, let's say, if that.

that were true, it's not true, by the way, but if that were true, the only responsible way for him to handle that information as a journalist, he would know this, would be to quietly pass it off to an organization that does not have his conflicts, right? Because his conflicts make it so that that information could be readily dismissed, right? Or that it is tainted by the context that that information would appear in, which would be this campaign of vengeance, right, this kind of suicide bombers manifesto that he's been publishing. That, to me, tells you all you need to know about whether or not there is serious information, the public interest that he is in possession of that's going to be explosive, right?

Because it would not be responsible to reveal it that way, right? And so I think it's just, it's tough to talk about because you've got to make different calculations about different types of information, I shared in this book what I thought was mine to share, what related to my experience, what I felt that I could state for certain, and what I felt related to this broader story

about the distortion of reality amid Trump's rise, and the distortion of my reality, right? And I think it's worth people time. You know, if people want to talk about their ideas about the book or what their ideas about the author or their ideas about what the book

should have been instead, that's up to anyone who wants to do that. I, whatever, you know, I'm not going to tell anyone how to think or feel about anything, but that's not, you know, my hope is that the actual book that I

wrote will be assessed on its merits. Yeah. I, um, just for the record, found what he did by trying to tease for subscriptions, the notion that you had some secret information about a conspiracy related to the butler shooting in order to get blue and on people to sign up to be really, really gross.

Among other grotesque things. Yeah. Among, there's, there have been others. But yeah, that one in particular got my goat. The point though that you make, though, is like, why doesn't he hand over information to a neutral reporter, I think that that would be a fair question people would ask a view, like, particularly not less now, but the book, but during that period between when he, RFK, endorsed Trump and the election. Like, in theory, there could have been time.

Well, that period, my, well, you have no idea what I did or didn't do, first of all. But, but, but in that, but in that period, I, that period that was at the end of August, right, of 24. By the next month is sort of, I mean, I write about it in the book, but the next month is sort of spent with my world cracking up, right? And then with this scandal breaking out in public. And then with me fearing for my life, my privacy. and fleeing and, you know, then ending up out here and spending this year trying to lay low and think and right.

I hear you, Olivia, and I just, like, this is just with love that, like, the guy ends up getting nominated to be HHS secretary. You've seen uphand how he lies and manipulates people. You've seen it firsthand. You've seen it firsthand. You have evidence. he's getting nominated. And you write in the book that, like, you were praying that God would use him as a force for good. That's like, I mean, by that point, it was pretty obvious that God was not going to use him as a force for good.

Was it not? You still pray. Well, but there was no indication. It wasn't like I was praying that he was going to use him for force for good, dot, dot, dot, parenthesis. But I knew he was not because he's a lying son of a bitch who is like perpetrating a fraud on the public. Like, that wasn't in there. That part wasn't in there. So, like, do you see it clear?

But, like, so you could have done something to try to. Maybe we pray differently. But could you have prayed for good, but also tried to stop it? You could have tried to stop it. What do you ask you exactly? He was trashing you. He's being nominated to be HHS secretary. His reign, I think, as you said in the newsletter today, you agree with, has not been good.

like you had information that you could have shared i like look matt gates got got denied like they're like it's possible r fk wasn't even a republican it's possible that these senators could have not you know confirmed him and and you didn't share anything about about him why like why did you still love him or was it just you're making you're just i i don't know how to uh responsibly uh handle this on camera with you here um you just i'm writing in that scene that you're you're talking about, about how I felt privately, about my private reaction, how I felt privately, right? But you had acted public, you'd acted to help him.

Like, you admit in the book, you'd acted to help him over the course of the campaign. And so, like, once you realized that he was screwing you over, you didn't, you didn't take any counteraction. You just let him, right? Walk over you. You're reading about it now. I lost my job. But now he's been, now he's in there and he's doing a lot of bad stuff.

Like, don't you look at that and think, like, do you look at that? I guess when you're saying that you have the distance now, that have clarity, like, do you see, do you see clearly what he's doing now? Yeah, I agree with you. It's, what was your phrasing? It hasn't been good. I agree with that. I think that's the correct assessment. But I don't really know what to do.

with the question that you're asking me because it's making a lot of assumptions and I just It's not making assumptions It's just like you said you helped them right during the campaign I read about it I write about what I did wrong yeah

And so like once you've done that Like you didn't You know you cease to be Have to have become like a journalistic actor I lost my job I was fired I was fired and I was in hiding

and I was afraid I was terrified Right Yeah Of what I mean I write in The book about You know I was terrified of

The man I did not marry And I was very worried about people Knowing where I was And We pause this Yeah we can pause it Sorry. Hey, y'all, at this point in the conversation, we took a beat, gathered ourselves, and got back together for the rest of the convo.

So please stick around for Olivia Nutsi on her new book, American Canton. I mean, a lot of my whole, you know, the last year was just, you know, my whole life was T-stabilized, right? And it also just, there was, um, I was not in motion for the first time in really since I was like 18, right? because I'd been working my whole life. And I'd been, one of the things about being a political reporter that's so great is that you don't have to justify, the stakes are always apparent, right? Like, you never have to think, like, is what I'm doing important? Like, am I, you know, do I have purpose, right? It's inherent to the task.

And that's an enormous burden lifted, I think. and then all of a sudden I'm still and I'm dealing also just with like a lot of things and people I thought that I knew who were it turned out not who I thought that they were and I could not predict behavior successfully and I was just scared yeah yeah And I don't, I'm sorry. Because of the stakes is why. No, no, no, no, it's because of the stakes what you're talking about that I'm like, I'm sticking with this. That's why I, I, you can ask whatever. And so I just like, you said you left, you're in hiding, you're scared.

Again, he's a man of important, a huge responsibility right now. Like, if there's another public health crisis, he's in charge. And I'm just trying to like, just ask directly. Like, were you scared of him? Like, were you scared of him? Like, were you scared of Bobby? I mean, it's dangerous for a woman to keep any kind of diary, generally speaking. I think history has shown that.

But, you know, I... Kennedy history has shown that also. I was just scared in general, and I felt like I felt very vulnerable in general. And, you know, it was very clear to me by... by the time I made it out here, that no one was going to protect me, right? That it seemed as though no one really had any boundaries as it related to utilizing me or brutalizing me for their own benefit. And it seems recent events suggest that that's still the case.

And so I was scared. In general, and I, um, I, um, it was a strange time, you know. Yeah. I mean, I also think I take a, you know, it's your criticism that I, then I don't come out, you know, guns blazing in this book is fair and, you know, that's totally legitimate that that's your reaction. But, uh, writing about this at all is an enormous risk that I've assumed. Yeah.

And, you know, I realized that there's a certain faction or many factions of people who are just never going to be happy with anything that I do, right? And that's fine. And, but I could have just not sent anything, right? I could have not told you about my experience here. There was a Goodfellers element in the book at the book. points where you feel like, did you ever watch the movie Goodfellas? You did. You're a Italian. I thought you meant I referenced it. Oh, no. No. Like, you know, the helicopters are following them, he thinks, and then the helicopter ends up following them. There's throughout the book,

you're like, you think the drones are following you. Was a drone following you? That was another thing that never satisfied me. Hope not. Hope not. I don't know. Did you have a Ray Leota feel to yourself at times? Like, who did you think was manning the drone? De Niro. No, I, well, I often feel like Ray Leota in the second half of Goodfellas. And I do root for bad guys in movies. Okay. A couple other just silly things that are just, you know, that I can't, I have to get off my chest before I lose you. Wait, have you ever read the Nick Pilegey book that Goodfellas is based on? I should. I should. I know. It's really good. You should read it. I mean, it adheres, the script to Goodfellas, it hears so strictly to the book that it's astonishing. It's called Wise Guys. It's really good. I should. I never go.

backwards kind of like if I've seen a movie I don't do the book which is stupid but that's just you know I don't I typically don't either but I love Nick Pilege so you said you wrote this walking through the you know through the hills there in Malibu on your phone and I just have to you're not pulling some of these history you're doing history facts you're doing science facts there's microplastics there's old quotes I read everything on my phone yeah so you're Googling it while you're writing? Like, are you doing this from memory? How is, like, how are you handle on that? Well, how do I do it? I'm trying to think how do I do it? Like, if you start, you start to reference Plato. Well, depends. Is that all from memory? If I, if I, I don't think I

referenced, if I, if I, I've got it right here. I'll start, I'll start looking for the weirdest reference while you message. No, I mean, if I, I mean, if I have to come back home and go to a book or go to, like my Dictionary of Etymology or something that I'm not going to, I'll just TK it, you know, in the moment or I just write, a lot of times I write, but Tim, a lot of times I write like half sentences while I'm, you know, and then I, or just half form thoughts and then I go back to it later or I, it's important to me to not let ideas flutter away. And so that process of pacing and, and writing or hiking and writing is very good for that, I find. You know, but I know I go back and I, you know, fact check it or edit it later, but also on a phone. The Dante, you had Dante, Vida, obviously the cantoe is a reference to Dante. What was, talk to me about that. Talk to me about Dante. I just was reading it.

And, you know, also I arrived out here and like the, it's like I go from the fire of my own life. And then I arrive out here and the world is literally on fire. here, right? And it was hard not to grow pretty attached because of that. I mean, I like broken things. That's no surprise. And Dante, as I recall, it's been a minute. I think it was probably 1998. It made me want to reread it again. But I think that you go down into hell and then there's redemption on the other side. Do you feel like you, are we paralleling Dante? or just inspired by him? I wasn't trying to, you know, write structurally in the same way.

I just, I couldn't help but, you know, relate to the story of, you know, walking into hell. And there's a, it's a very funny illustration in one of the translations that I have. It's like a chart of hell, and it's like there's an arrow by like the, like, the, gate to hell that there's a vestibule and it just says like opportunists who who do you imagine is in that is in that vestibule everybody that we dealt with over the last 10 years it's crowded at the gate yeah the repetition in the book is there is is it are we incanting is it incantation the repetition or is that your is that just your internal monologue the etymology of incantation I don't know, but I'm going to look it up when we finish here, and I can step into the next room.

But no, I mean, Kantow, it's a division of poetry. And I, you know, it's an elliptical structure, the book, right? There are no chapters or no index. I didn't do acknowledgements because I felt like it would, the kindest thing I could do to anyone who I should think would be to not put them in this book by name. It's not that bad, baby. People would have appreciated this, but I hear you. I'm sending notes privately. I just, you know, I felt like I didn't need to contribute to anyone's harassment, you know.

But the elliptical structure, the sort of, you know, the idea, this idea that I returned to a few times of the snake eating its tail, right, in this feeling of the last 10 years being circular, right? and being at the trial with Donald Trump and thinking back to being at the White House or being further uptown at the start of his campaign. I was trying to render an experience for the reader that would feel something of what it felt like to live through all that and to watch it. Which is a disorienting feeling.

We live through that. To that point, I think your best long, line, that's rude to say best line. One of my favorites was when you talk about how Donald Trump fits in Las Vegas and he fits in all these places in the Oval Office when you'd sit with him, the set of the White House seemed in doubt. And then later you talk about how you interviewed Trump after the Butler assassination and how he said you, it didn't feel at all surreal. And speaking for myself, the Butler assassination and you describing him in the Oval Office, it all makes me feel like we're in a simulation, that this isn't real at all. And I just wonder, you know, if you have a reflection on that, having done navigating the unreality throughout the book and throughout your last decade. I think it's obvious I've been doing a good job, right? Navigating it? No.

Feels like it's engulfed you. But I'm happy to be here. Yeah, alive. It ends with a raven, the book. Rends with the hawk, the red-tailed hawk. A hawk? Oh, shit. That was a total flub on my part. The worst bird for me to pick, for me to get that wrong.

It ends with the hawk. Yeah. And you weren't sure if the hawk is cutting through the sky, and you weren't sure if it was a reassurance or a warning. What ends with a drone? Do you want to Should I pull it up? I mean, I read it

I finished it a second time last night at 1 a.m. You know, here it is. It's a reminder. There's a hawk. There's a hawk and a drone. There's a hawk and a drone. Okay, there's a hawk and a drone.

And the question is whether they're offering you reassurance or whether it's a threat. And I'm wondering if you feel now after having finished it. and having gone through this rollout, whether you feel like maybe it was a threat. I feel more reassured than ever. Really? Yeah.

I mean, I'm an optimist. But I also just thoughtful people are quiet. They're not, you know, I just, I don't, I find it quite easy to not take personally the digital stoning. and often I find value in it. Sometimes people are very funny or have something useful to say by way of criticism. But it has still been a shock and disturbing to see people engage with this harassment, right?

And to not call it that, to not observe it for what is just because I am perceived in a lot of ways because of that harassment campaign as having this sort of politics that the people who might support and defend women don't want to defend, right? That's what it feels like. And I think it's... I agree with that. Yeah, it's just...

People that are king of you and don't know. like, oh, this is some political thing because of the Biden article. It's like the Biden article could have been written by anybody with eyes, just not as well as, it's not as well crafted as you did. Also, I don't want to steal valor, right? Like Alex Thompson, Annie Lynch, the Wall Street Journal, Axios, they did real reporting that for which there was nothing but social penalty, right, at a time when it was very difficult. And those reporters deserve credit for that.

But I wrote about President Biden came after the first the debate, right? Like there was no great revelation. It was about the fact that there had been this conspiracy of silence. All right. I'm going to end with something nice. I don't know if you'll find it nice. I hope so. The men that you've been talking about that have done doing the harassment campaign and the politician, the secretary.

Yeah, yeah. We're going to get to it. It's coming. the politician, the fucking secretary that I have nothing but contempt for. All of them, everybody in these books, pale, in this book rather, pales in comparison to your dad who is in the book. And I just, I wish that he was still here so that I could have met him and talked to him and so you would have had him to this process because I think you write about him so

beautifully and um thanks anyway uh i know my mother lost her her parents when she was young like you and it was just so tough for her and they were also great and her dad was great and and it was it really kind of i reminded me of that um how tough that was for her but how how also how she kind of held him with her you know in ways that strengthened her and i hope that you had that thank you know i mean i write in the book that it was the first time i was happy that he wasn't here was during all that since like well at least at least i don't have to he doesn't have to see this you know um probably wrong though but um but yeah i'd rather have had him for a short time than someone else for a long time you know all right i appreciate you go hang in there um if uh tell monica hi for me all right

i'm going to add to my uh my list of signs that your book roll out has gone awry um tim miller says, I appreciate you, girl, hang in there. We're just going to leave it there. That was a podcast. You didn't tell me to fuck off. I told you a good podcast, but if you told me to fuck off. I can't say that to you. All right.

Every word casts a spell, Tim. Words are powerful. That is true. We'll leave it with that. It's American Canto. Go get it. Go get it. It's American Canto.

Don't listen to the haters. Everybody else, we'll see you later today. with another edition of the Bullwark podcast. Oh, no, tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow. I'm lost. It's been a week. We'll see you tomorrow with another edition of the Bullwark podcast.

Peace. Lost you've come I want to know you Tell me how it feels Disappeal Wasing from the side You can't smoke here Running off the boat

I feel well I'm spinning of the wheel I'm feeling for a pipe to go down. Love will be a film. Ooh, is it far. I want to know you. Tell me how it feels. Someone's here.

Ports it from the moon Someone knows I'm here Running off the blood I'll feel it around Tell me how I feel Love will be revealed Love will be revealed Love will be revealed

The Bullwarker podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.