RFK Jr’s sext scandal: ‘She found teeth flossing quite erotic – I found it profoundly disgusting’

Read time: 4 mins

In brief…

• Emily Maitlis has big questions over the ‘digital affair’ between journalist Olivia Nuzzi and Robert Kennedy Jr and what really happened during their online relationship.
• Journalist Helen Lewis, who recently reviewed Nuzzi’s memoir, tells Emily it involved an “erotic” moment in which she watched him floss his teeth on FaceTime.
• Lewis says the way in which RFK has continued to rise in US politics shows how "disemboweled" the US media has become under Donald Trump’s second administration.

What’s the story?

Is it sexy to watch someone floss their teeth? It was for Robert F Kennedy and political journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who had an alleged online affair while he was campaigning to become president in 2024.

She has recently published a book, American Canto, which Emily Maitlis describes as being both "salacious and highbrow” – with some readers wanting to know the sordid details, while others possibly are concerned about the impact situations like this have on impartiality in the US media, and its relationship with politics.

"They were having digital sex, and so everyone's head started reeling and asking what digital sex looks or sounds like in the 21st Century," Emily says.

"Does it mean that they were never together? Does it mean that they had phone calls?"

But anyone looking for answers to these questions might be disappointed by the book.

"One of the criticisms is that for a tell-all – it tells you very little at all," Emily adds.

‘You might expect an affair to dent a politician's career’

American Canto was described by journalist Helen Lewis in a review for The Atlantic as a "tell nothing" memoir, and she was able to answer Emily's questions about what the relationship between Nuzzi and RFK involved.

"It's sexting, essentially, although there are some very odd things involved," Lewis tells The News Agents.

"She seems to admit that she watched him on FaceTime flossing his teeth, which she seems to have found quite erotic, and I found profoundly disgusting."

There is no suggestion in the book that RFK and Nuzzi had sex, but Lewis says she is “keeping an open mind” on that.

Moving on from the "salacious" side of the memoir, Lewis says there are some big "ethical questions" on what the affair highlights about US politics, journalism – and how the two work together.

"What I find most striking about it, is we live in a world in which, if a politician had a very high-profile affair in the middle of a campaign, you'd expect it might be a dent to their career," Lewis says.

"But we're now in a post-Trump world, where not even a whisper of a suggestion that anyone might object to this, or that RFK might even think about his position, has even come up at all.”

Is Olivia Nuzzi the new Monica Lewinsky?

Since the relationship came to light, Nuzzi has spoken to the press about what happened between her and RFK, with Emily describing her as a “canny operator” and using the situation to yield fame and fortune.

Lewis says Nuzzi's use of the situation to her advantage can be compared to that of Monica Lewinsky - even if she is hesitant to do so.

"I end up thinking about Monica Lewinsky and the arc that she's gone through, from being seen as a 'scarlet woman' and a temptress through to being considered the victim, this empowered woman reclaiming her narrative," Lewis says.

"I don't want to see Nuzzi as a victim. I think that's sort of slightly infantilising.

"But I also do agree that she's ending up taking a lot more of the consequences of this relationship than Robert F Kennedy Jr is, which does seem unfair."

Lewis says this is precisely why “crooks, frauds and charlatans” are drawn to the MAGA movement: “It's almost impossible to be canceled.”

"Robert F Kennedy, Jr knew that he was never going to be embraced by the Democrats, and he was never going to make it in the two party system as an independent, so he did a very smart or calculated thing, which was to endorse Donald Trump."

‘American journalism has been disemboweled by MAGA’

Lewis says the state of politics – and journalism – in America right now constantly reminds her of the Friedrich Nietzsche quote, that "when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

"That's what's happened to lots of people in the Republican Party," she says.

"They fought Trump for a bit, but eventually they just let it wash over them, because it turns out there were other things that they cared about more."

Lewis says the big difference between journalism in the UK and the US, and why we don’t often see dramas like this play out on this side is the Atlantic, is amount of money in American media, and how TV anchors and other key names consider themselves “political players” as much as part of the media.

"One of the things you take from this is that American journalism has been completely disemboweled by MAGA," she adds.

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