Cheryl Hines, the actress and wife of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is now pushing back against renewed public attention surrounding allegations involving journalist Olivia Nuzzi during the 2024 presidential campaign. Speaking with Katie Miller on an upcoming episode of her podcast, Hines portrayed the situation as one more distraction in a relentlessly turbulent year.
Nuzzi, described on the program as having been involved in an “emotional and digital” affair with Kennedy, is reportedly writing a memoir in which she intends to address her relationship with the former presidential candidate. Miller, in a clip released on YouTube, suggested that “There’s a reporter who’s trying to monetize herself over Bobby,” before asking Hines directly how she reacted to the accusations then, and how she feels now that a book is on the way.
Hines responded by placing the tabloid story in the context of a campaign already marked by what she called “headlines, and rumors, and articles, and chaos.”
“You know, at the time it was-, Bobby had been running for president,” she said. “And it was an exhausting year and a half of headlines, and rumors, and articles, and chaos. And at that time I thought, ‘Okay, this is more chaos and more rumors.’”
But Hines emphasized that personal tragedy during that period dwarfed any media-driven controversy. “It was a lot. It was coming up-, it was on the heels of everything else. And I had just lost my nephew, I had just lost my nephew,” she said. In that moment, she explained, real hardship provided painful clarity about where to focus.
“So that was really what’s important in life, so you have a real loss, and a real situation, and a real family situation,” Hines continued. “And then to have a story was distracting at best, but also in the scheme of what’s real, what’s not, what’s important, what’s not, it was not ranking up in the: ‘this is what’s important in life’ category.”
Asked what she thinks now about Nuzzi’s intentions, Hines did not engage in speculation. “And now, I don’t know, you know, I don’t know-, I have no idea, I don’t know this person. Don’t know their intentions. I could guess, but I won’t. But you can if you want! But I, I don’t know,” she said.
Miller suggested that “There’s a lot of people who look for clout.” Hines agreed, widening her critique beyond the specific allegations.
“Well, that’s the thing that I really learned during the campaign,” she said. “There are people that really want to be involved in the conversation. They want to be a part of it. And they want to-, I’m not just talking about this person, I’m talking about a lot people. And they spend a lot time figuring out how to write something that’s going to get people’s attention, and if they do, then they are really celebrating, you know?”
She added that for some in media and public life, facts take a back seat to notoriety: “And whether it’s true or false, it doesn’t matter if it gets people’s intention, it’s a celebration, it’s a success for them.”
In her remarks, Hines stopped well short of engaging the allegations directly. Instead, she suggested that the public should draw its own conclusions about those who profit from sensationalized storytelling — while she and her family focus on what she called the “real” priorities in life.
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