Before we get into Ryan Lizza’s latest Substack – Part 4 in his series – let’s talk about Olivia Nuzzi. Her book, American Canto, comes out this week. It’s also looking like she’s on the way out at Vanity Fair. She officially started at VF in September, supposedly acting as the magazine’s West Coast editor. Page Six now claims that Nuzzi never picked up her Conde Nast laptop and was skipping meetings. Sources told Page Six: “It looks like they are getting rid of her… I will not be surprised if they drop Olivia….Even before this broke, she didn’t have a single story in the next two issues of the magazine. She never picked up her Condé Nast computer, never came to a meeting, never responded to an email she was cc’d on. The only thing she ‘edited’ in the Hollywood issue got cut.” What’s even funnier/more pathetic is that American Canto will most likely bomb because Nuzzi’s ex-fiance is destroying her and her credibility in his Substack series. Some highlights from Lizza’s Part 4, “Means of Control.”
A planned assignation: Bobby and Olivia planned to consummate their relationship on August 23, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona, after he endorsed Trump at a rally in nearby Glendale. The timing was perfect. Bobby would no longer be a presidential candidate himself, so the media glare would dim, and, more importantly, Olivia later told me, he would no longer have the Secret Service protection that complicated an encounter. (And presumably Cheryl wouldn’t be around, either.) There were two problems. Inconveniently for them, I was also planning to be in Arizona to cover the Trump-Kennedy event. And then, a few days before the rally and the planned hotel room encounter, after Bobby and Olivia had been talking, texting, and FaceTiming for almost a year, I finally learned about their affair. Olivia reluctantly canceled her rendezvous with Bobby, who was about to become one of the most powerful figures in the Trump universe, a fortuitous development because Olivia was wrapping up her latest New York magazine assignment, a profile of Trump.
The secret recording of Trump talking about Butler: But first, you are probably wondering what Izzy told Olivia she believed she had overheard Trump say about his attempted assassination when Izzy was secretly recording Trump and his campaign aides at Mar-a-Lago on August 13, 2024. According to Olivia, Izzy thought Trump said something that cast doubt on the official story behind Trump’s bloody ear, which was injured on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Thomas Crooks tried to kill Trump. I assumed the context of what Izzy thought she overheard was about whether it was one of the eight rounds fired by Crooks that nicked Trump’s ear or something else—ricocheting glass or a bullet fragment—but that’s just speculation. What I know from Olivia is that the quality of the audio recording was poor, that she couldn’t corroborate Izzy’s recollection, that she discussed the recording with Bobby, and that after a phone call with Bobby while he was on vacation with his wife in Baja, Olivia erased the recording.
Lizza spoke to RFK Jr. on the phone on August 24, 2024: Lizza called Kennedy “disturbingly unrattled” and described his voice as “much more broken and difficult to listen to than I had ever realized.” Lizza wondered why in the world anyone would have phone sex with that voice. He also described Kennedy’s indifference to Nuzzi and Kennedy’s promise to never see Nuzzi again.
Nuzzi apparently spilled what she learned about Kennedy to Lizza: Lizza says that Nuzzi claimed that Kennedy has a pregnancy fetish, that he doesn’t actually believe the anti-vaxx stuff he spews, that Kennedy staffers believed he was using drugs again (and Kennedy confessed to Nuzzi that he was using ketamine), and that Nuzzi believed Kennedy was cheating on his wife Cheryl Hines with multiple women.
That’s all I have the stomach for now. Lizza is not an honest broker when discussing the personal details of his intimate conversations with Nuzzi, but I actually appreciate that he was effectively storing up information to scoop Nuzzi ahead of her book’s release AND ruin her credibility forever. I tip my cap to someone so methodically petty, honestly. While I couldn’t care less about the melodrama between Lizza and Nuzzi, I am interested in what this has revealed about Kennedy. It feels like all of the men who really have Trump’s ear are on drugs, right? Oh, and the big reveal about Izzy’s Trump tape is just dumb.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Lizza’s IG and Nuzzi’s IG.
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- United States President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr take part in a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission event in the East Room of the White House Featuring: Donald Trump, Robert F Kennedy Jr Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 22 May 2025 Credit: Francis Chung/POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr testifies before the US Senate Committee on Finance on “The President’s 2026 Health Care Agenda” in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill Featuring: Robert F Kennedy Jr Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 04 Sep 2025 Credit: Andrew Thomas/CNP/INSTARimages
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- United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr testifies before the US Senate Committee on Finance on “The President’s 2026 Health Care Agenda” in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill Featuring: Robert F Kennedy Jr Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 04 Sep 2025 Credit: Andrew Thomas/CNP/INSTARimages
I’m lost. I don’t see any reference to who Izzy is. Please halp.
Same. Too many names with “zz” in them, I can’t make sense of this!
I think there’s a lesson here. Never have anything to do with people who have double z’s in their name.
Izzy was the sketch artist that Olivia sent to draw Trump for an article. She had Izzy bring a tape recorder to her sketch session to record anything Trump said during the session. I hate that I know all of this, but despite the salaciousness of the scandal, it really says a lot about the total corruption of today’s access journalism.
TY for explaining!
Same. Google didn’t help.
The assassination attempt was likely staged but even if the SS were completely sleeping on the job and the shooter was legit–the ear “injury” was NOT a result of a bullet graze FFS. If a bullet grazes your ear, the ear is gone. My guess was always that a glass scrape from a shattered teleprompter but I’ll entertain almost any other alternative explanation.
Especially since he didn’t even have it bandaged the next day on the golf course.
I’m really starting to believe the whole thing was staged and they used one of those red dye capsules like in movies. I totally believe they would deliberately kill an audience member to give it authenticity.
@Kitten a man actually died in this assassination attempt.
I am well aware that a man died.
Guess what? Over 80 Venezuelan boaters have died at the hands of this administration.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died due to the eradication of USAID by this administration.
Hundreds of immigrants have died in ICE detention centers because of this administration.
We’re all just sacrificial lambs to him. Eradicate SNAP and the ACA extensions. poison our food with forever chemicals, exacerbate climate change by eradicating all renewables…it’s intended to kill us while enriching his billionaire pals.
I feel no need to pretend that Trump gives two shits about Americans dying whether by gun, by illness, by poverty whatever.
I do not understand why anyone would think that this would be a bridge too far for him. For all we know the shooter was meant to aim away but this man had the misfortune of getting caught in the crossfire. All I know is that Trump’s ear was not shot and instead of celebrating the victim as a hero and the perpetrator as a villain, they quietly shut the door on the entire investigation and we never heard anything about either of these men ever again.
@BrassyRebel–Absolutely nothing would surprise me at this stage.
@Brassy Rebel, my guess is that the whole thing was staged is what Izzy thought she overheard – since I can’t imagine “he was grazed by glass, not a bullet” would be very shocking at this point – I think most people thought that at the time, too.
@Bisynaptic, yes, a man died from this “assassination” attempt, but that doesn’t mean it was NOT something T’s team staged. @Kitten has already pointed out that the administration has willfully murdered Venezuelan sailors just suspected of having drugs on board (sidenote: as this article further reminds us, given the rampant drug use by RFK, Hegseth, Trump and the rest of this crew, their very literal “war on drugs” is astonishingly hypocritical, even for them) and millions of people via neglect, canceling SNAP, destroying general healthcare, and prohibiting access to necessary reproductive healthcare.
Further, it seems clear to most that T had Epstein murdered in prison (given the gap in the tapes, etc.), and there are enough fishy elements to at least raise questions about whether the administration was involved in Charlie Kirk’s murder (given Kirk’s push to release the Epstein files – again, all the Rs in Congress were willing to starve millions of Americans *to death* to stop those files becoming public, what’s one more person to them? And especially since the assassin turned out to be MAGA); and even whether the administration partnered with/ordered the Afghani CIA agent to assassinate two members of the National Guard last week.
So the fact that an innocent person died in Butler horrifyingly does NOT eliminate the possibility that the Butler incident was planned by people in T’s camp.
@DK-Allllllll of this including what you said about Kirk. They could easily stop the conspiracies by being fully transparent with the American public but they never will because they have everything to hide. Nobody will ever convince me that Trump won’t do literally anything to retain power and yes, that includes m*rder.
Trump trashes anyone who simply disagrees with him, yet he has never said anything about this young man who attempted to assassinate him. I find that strange. Some crack journalist should investigate this young man’s parents bank account. The quietness from all involved is deafening.
https://www.celebitchy.com/951996/lizza_olivia_nuzzi_outed_confidential_sources_ran_catch_kill_ops_for_rfk_jr/
A sketch artist friend that Nuzzi sent to Mar-a-Lago to flatter Trump.
Under normal circumstances the press would be asking Kennedy about his relationship with Nuzzi and his use of Ketamine but I’d be surprised if they did that. Tina Brown wrote a substack about this. It would seem that she was rooting for Nuzzi before Lizza’s revelations. Maybe she saw herself in Nuzzi. Is VF waiting for the book to come out to fire Nuzzi?
Too bad…These two seem so perfect together. As for RFK I am nauseous.
They planned a date to consummate their relationship. Imagine looking forward to being intimate with that decrepit reptile. Vom.
As Lizza points out, imagine having phone sex with that voice! And Nuzzi suspected he was involved with multiple women! Apparently, there are women who don’t find him totally revolting. Hard to believe.
They must put their “He’s a Kennedy” blinders on.
Even more significantly, she told him what is kind of obvious: RFK, Jr doesn’t actually believe the antivax BS he spouts. He’s merely taking advantage of the antivaxxers as a mobilized base to exploit for his own gain.
Ryan Lizza’s sitting on all this information is unconscionable. This whole story is a serious indictment of our political press. No wonder we have Trump for a President, again.
Yup.
This is how unserious and irresponsible Nuzzi is as a journalist: She ERASED the tape of the conversation about Butler. No real journalist would ever do that. (No real journalist would do ANY of this.)
These people are deplorable.
She may have erased the tape, but I’d be willing to bet that there were copies made of that tape. It may well be a smoking gun, and considering the amoral cutthroats involved, including Liza and Nuzzi, no one is going to destroy evidence that could be parlayed into power, cash, a pardon, etc.
Seems like Izzy would have a copy of that tape. No reason to give the original to Nuzzi or anyone else.
So, there’s a guy named Kirk Bangstad who owns a brewery in Wisconsin (Minoqua Brewing Company) who, in a prior life, lived in New York City. These days, he has a mailing list and sends out a weekly blast. I’m sharing part of it here because it illuminates a possible reason why Nuzzi never bothered to pick up her VF computer or attend any meetings.
A long setup, which I will spare you, but bottom line is he was hired to help prepare then-mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner for policy speeches during his 2013 campaign, and worked with a team of really smart, committed people who wanted to make New York a better place to live. (He has some things to say about Weiner – basically that he might have been flawed, but he was also really smart – and this was between the first and second Weiner scandal.)
The rest of this is Bangstad’s story:
“We all had a blast nerding out over how to make ferry routes more efficient or how to stop coastal erosion by building more berms or jetties, etc.—you name the issue, however esoteric, we were trying to solve it.
“Then one day, the campaign’s communications director … told us we were going to get another intern.
“No problem,” I thought. We already had like 10 of them, and they were all great.
“Enter Olivia Nuzzi in high heels and an elegant pantsuit at the age of 20.
“Mind you, I have absolutely nothing against dressing for success, but I think Nuzzi’s glamorous appearance may have convinced [the communications director] that she was older than she actually was—thus her decision to put Nuzzi in our office as opposed to the open-air cubicles where all the other college interns worked.
“I took it in stride, sat next to Nuzzi, and my team delegated various tasks to her over the course of a few days.
“Now it’s been over 12 years, so my memory of this time period isn’t great, but I remember being amazed that in the course of a few days working side-by-side with the now-infamous Olivia Nuzzi, she accomplished almost nothing.
“She didn’t get a damn thing done for days on end—just sat there like a bump on a log.
Now I know why.
“She actually wasn’t there to work on the campaign. She was there to spy on Anthony Weiner and try to leak a little dirt about his campaign to a major newspaper with the hopes of being ‘discovered’ as a journalist!
“The one problem with that plan was that [the communications director], potentially hip to her true motives, stuck Nuzzi behind closed doors in the most unglamorous office imaginable—far, far away from Weiner, Huma, or any of the other higher-flying political consultants we rarely saw.
“And that’s why I’m guessing she only lasted in our office for a few days. I remember coming into work one morning–not seeing her–and breathing a sigh of relief to my colleagues.
” ‘Useless,’ I remember one or all of us saying together while nodding our heads in agreement.”
Oh that’s some hot tea! IIRC, Keith Olbermann was keeping her company at that time.
Nuzzi seems to see herself as another Valeria Plame—keep dreaming Olivia.
Her complete bulldozing of journalistic ethics is…. Wow! And, she enabled the career of a man who is responsible for so many preventable illnesses and deaths via his gross snake oil rhetoric that he doesn’t actually appear to believe.
Izzy, Nuzzi, Lizza…it’s too many “z”s and I’m too uninterested now to figure it out.
Poor Olivia, she must’ve been so discombobulated watching the interns actually work at the campaign. Her book will bomb and she’ll lose her VF job. Which decrepit sept- or octogenarian should she slide under next, Larry Ellison? Rupert Murdoch? Or 102 year old George Joseph?
I don’t know that he ruins her credibility. I don’t believe either one of them. They’re both totally self-promoting.
He claims he’s moved on with a new girlfriend of a year. When did that start? A couple of months after he ended things with Nuzzi? Why would anyone sign up to be in the middle of this mess, which he is clearly mired in. As Phil Donahue said, “Never complain, never explain.” He needs to take the high road and never say a word about this. Don’t acknowledge the crazy. Just remove himself from it.