The gossip frenzy around Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relationship with journalist Olivia Nuzzi has taken a poetic turn.
On Saturday, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance, fellow high-profile journalist Ryan Lizza, published the second part of a Substack series outlining the breakdown of their relationship. Lizza partially attributes the erosion of the relationship to Nuzzi’s romance with Kennedy.
In the piece, Lizza shared an undated “note” he said Kennedy sent to Nuzzi, noting that Nuzzi had characterized it as a “poem.” But what’s in a name? Here’s what the alleged missive said:
“Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” Kennedy is said to have written via text message. “Drink from me Love.”
The message reportedly went on, “I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. I’ll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. ‘Dont spill a drop’. I am a river You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love.”
Nuzzi’s upcoming tell-all book, “American Canto,” details an emotional affair between her and the married Kennedy when she was covering his 2024 presidential campaign. Last year, news of a sexting scandal between the pair led to Nuzzi losing her job with New York Magazine, where she had written a profile on Kennedy, and triggered the end of her engagement with Lizza.
Kennedy, who said last year he had never met Nuzzi in person outside of her work on the profile, remains married to comedian Cheryl Hines.
Lizza, who was let go from his own job as Washington correspondent at The New Yorker following allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017, began telling his side of the Nuzzi-Kennedy affair in a multi-part series this week.
Neither Nuzzi nor Kennedy immediately responded to a request for comment on the poem. According to Lizza, it was one of many poems, some of which were “too explicit to print.”