It’s rare that Washington is seized by a truly blockbuster sex scandal, but the exceptionally public breakup of journalists Oliva Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza—spurred by Nuzzi’s alleged “digital affair” with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has burned, to borrow a metaphor, like a wildfire. So far, its charred acreage encompasses multiple job losses, various legal actions, copious ink spilled across broadsheets and tabloids and group texts, at least one strained marriage, and a surprising cameo from former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, whose career blew up 15 years ago when he was caught having an extramarital affair while he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail.
All of this is just getting started. Nuzzi’s memoir about the ordeal, American Canto, is set for release on December 2. Meanwhile, Lizza is doing a quasi-Dickensian serialization of his side of the story on his (paywalled) Substack, Telos. To dissect the behavior and prospects of all parties involved, Washingtonian called two seasoned crisis PR professionals—a married couple who wish to remain anonymous, given that this scandal has torched the reputations of basically everyone it’s touched.
Olivia Nuzzi
How she’s handling it: Badly, our professionals say. After vanishing for over a year, Nuzzi attempted a comeback with a glamorous New York Times profile and a book excerpt in Vanity Fair. But immediately, the narrative got away from her. Hours after her excerpt dropped, Lizza published “Part 1” of his own account, which made the showstopping claim that Nuzzi had an affair with a source, Mark Sanford, prior to her alleged dalliance with RFK. (Her lawyer issued a statement that wasn’t exactly a denial.) “As someone who has covered so many politicians, did she forget how oppo works?” one of our PR experts asked in disbelief. “You have to know your vulnerabilities and get ahead of them, and she didn’t.” Assuming it’s true, the public needed to learn about Sanford from Nuzzi, rather than Lizza. But that’s not what happened. “If the goal was to take back her narrative, she lost control of it the minute Ryan said ‘Mark Sanford.’ She’s trying to control the narrative with half the story. Ryan is telling her story for her.”
What she should do now: According to our professionals, that hinges on whether Mark Sanford appears in Nuzzi’s book. Assuming the allegation holds up, it’s better for her if he does. If he doesn’t, her credibility is shot. If the Sanford affair is in the book, they advise her to immediately say so—to tell the public that she’s “not afraid of her own story,” and encourage us to buy the book to learn more. But the fact that she hasn’t already done that probably signals that Sanford didn’t make it in, they say, so she’s going to have to answer some questions about why. At this point, Nuzzi seems to lack good options. But our professionals do have one piece of advice: Stay out of the courtroom. Don’t sue Lizza. “Discovery would be an absolute nightmare with these people—I mean, they were recording each other’s conversations.”
How it plays out: Both experts believe that Nuzzi is probably done in journalism. “Olivia seems to have wanted to swim with the sharks and got surprised that they bite,” one said. The other notes that she already lives in LA and excels at crafting drama—so maybe she could pivot to Hollywood.
Ryan Lizza
How he’s handling it: “She’s self-immolating and he’s paying the gas bill,” is how one of our PR people put it. “If he wants to save his career, then he has to sacrifice her, so he is.” One thing Lizza has done right, they agreed, is signaling his own vulnerabilities—admitting that he wasn’t a perfect partner, that he made some mistakes—so if bad stuff comes out about him now, it won’t land as hard. “He’s also owning the cliffhanger,” one of our experts added. “Everyone is waiting with bated breath for ‘Part 3, Ryan’s Version.’ I don’t know that everyone is waiting on Olivia the same way.”
What he should do now: That depends on his goals, our professionals say. If Lizza wants to continue to be a political journalist, then he has work to do—namely, political journalism. Between installments of the Olivia saga, Lizza’s new newsletter subscribers should be getting scoops and political analysis, so they see him as more than someone caught up in a scandal. On the other hand, our experts are not sure if he can do political journalism right now. One of these PR experts is often a source for reporters, and he says there’s no way he would ever pick up a call from Nuzzi or Lizza after this.
How it plays out: Lizza seems to be casting himself as a victim, but neither PR expert thinks it will work. And since his journalism prospects could be damaged, he might need to find another industry that will have him. “PR?” one suggests. “I’m kind of not kidding.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
How he’s handling it: The secretary of Health and Human Services has barely said anything at all. That’s probably smart. “He can’t really be hurt by this,” one of our experts said. “It’s a race to the bottom, but his image is already there, so he doesn’t have anything to lose. We’re all grossed out by it, but we’ve been grossed out by him for a long time now. His image doesn’t change.” There’s also some possible upside for Kennedy: “He’s ushering in a historic new measles outbreak, and people are talking about this.”
What he should do now: “Normally the rule is ‘crisis abhors a vacuum’ and telling your story is the way to go,” one professional explained. But Kennedy might be “disproving that maxim.” Just stay silent, they both agreed—he has nothing to gain from weighing in, and nothing to lose, since his reputation is “already such a mess.”
How it plays out: “I don’t think it changes anything for him. I think it keeps playing out around him.” Neither thinks it threatens his job. One brought up that this is probably the first sex-related controversy involving an HHS secretary since 1994, when Donna Shalala said publicly that masturbation was okay, so this is probably “sexing up HHS a little bit.”
Cheryl Hines
How she’s handling it: Hines is standing by her husband and saying very little about the scandal. This month, on a press tour for her new memoir, she refused to answer questions about RFK Jr.’s alleged affair. “If anyone in this story is a victim, Cheryl Hines has an opening to be,” one PR professional said, “but she’s choosing not to be a victim, so I think she’s going down with the ship.” The other added that while Hines seems to be copying her husband’s approach of “letting it all happen around her,” that’s less successful for her because “nobody understands where she’s coming from.” When you write a memoir, they explained, “the idea is to try to help people understand you better, and that’s not what happened here: We don’t know what’s going on inside their marriage, no one understands what she’s still doing with him, or how she’s tolerated what she’s tolerated. And nothing she’s done with her book has cleared that up.”
What she should do now: Again, this depends on her goals. Our experts believe that Hines is facing a painful choice between preserving her marriage and telling her story. If Hines wants to prioritize her marriage, then she should do what she’s doing: stay silent and let her reputation take a hit. If she wants to be understood, they’d send her to the New Yorker to sit for a long, nuanced profile where she could be vulnerable and go deep. But that could cost her marriage, unless RFK Jr. were “willing to make space for her to throw him under the bus.” That doesn’t seem to be the dynamic, and so far, Hines hasn’t gone rogue.
How it plays out: Of anyone involved in this scandal, our PR professionals say, Hines has “the least stable positioning—she can still change what she does at any point in time.” They think “everyone would understand if suddenly she wanted to tell a different story in the future” and that she “has more room to maneuver than anyone else in the story, because she’s the least responsible for any of it.”
Mark Sanford
How he’s handling it: Sanford has said absolutely nothing since Lizza’s allegation came out, and our professionals believe that’s working for him. “I think he comes off looking the best out of all the characters in this story,” one said. “Everyone sucks, but he sucks the least.” That’s because, in Lizza’s telling, Sanford broke off his entanglement with Nuzzi when he found out she had a boyfriend. During his previous scandal, he admitted to cheating on his ex-wife, so that aspect of his reputation is baked in. “If anything, he looks better behaved than he used to be,” one expert said. Weirdly enough, “if anyone comes out of this scandal with more credibility than they had before, it’s Mark Sanford.”
What he should do now: If Sanford were their client, our PR professionals would be scrambling for an advance copy of Nuzzi’s book to figure out whether he’s in it and, if so, how he comes across. In the meantime, one jokes, “I would not recommend that he go on Keith Olbermann’s podcast.” It probably doesn’t benefit him to say anything, they think, unless he wants to be in the spotlight again. But using his notoriety to grab relevance would hurt his credibility, so it looks somewhat dignified to stay mum.
How it plays out: That all depends on whether he’s in Nuzzi’s book. If not, he can probably hike the Appalachian Trail in peace.
Keith Olbermann
How he’s handling it: Speaking of using notoriety to grab relevance at the expense of dignity, Nuzzi’s former boyfriend, sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann, has been tweeting up a storm. On his Substack, Lizza described helping Nuzzi escape her relationship with Olbermann, which, according to Lizza, involved him paying her college tuition and buying her oodles of designer jewelry and clothes. Olbermann is not distancing himself from these claims; in fact, he seems to be reveling in them. On a recent episode of his podcast, he gleefully calls Nuzzi “my ex in exile, the mother of my dogs, the sharer of my complimentary tattoos and commitment rings,” before mocking the prose in her book excerpt and reading portions of it aloud.
What he should do now: “If what he wants is to remind people he exists and get people to listen to his podcast, then that’s going fine,” one PR professional says. “But if he wants credibility, the way he’s handling this is unwise.”
How it plays out: Olbermann is a bit player in this drama, but he does seem committed to commenting on it. Our experts wish he wouldn’t, but what can you do.
