Name: Olivia Nuzzi Speaks On RFK Scandal
Uploaded: 2025-12-21T14:00:58.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Olivia Nuzzi Speaks On RFK Scandal' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Olivia Nuzzi Speaks On RFK Scandal' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-21. Transcript available.

It seems like the political sex scandals are, like, one of America's favorite
things.
Isn't that everything is so schizophrenic these days and there's just scandal,
scandal,
scandal, scandal that no one has time.
There was a scandal about it.
There was a scandal about it a year ago, right?
But did he face any blowback from it, the honorable Reverend Dr. Secretary?
I mean, it was before the election, right?
Yeah.
Oh, he was a candidate or a surrogate for Trump.
At that point that the scandal kind of sparked, he had dropped out of the
presidential race
and he had endorsed Donald Trump, yeah.
Do you buy all that crap he says about the, you know, the health stuff?
No.
You think it's dangerous?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some of it, yeah.
I mean, I also think that there are some good things that he's done, too, right?
Like, I think when it comes to processed foods, dyes, pesticides, I thought the
work that he
did as an environmentalist was important, suing Monsanto.
Yeah.
That's great.
Yeah.
That sounds good.
Yeah.
Like, I think that's great.
But when it comes to, like, you know, degrading trust in the medical profession
or when it
comes to negatively affecting vaccination rates or sowing confusion about that
stuff or relying
on people who are not credible or just not being transparent in government.
Yeah.
Dr. Umar.
That's not good, right?
Yeah.
And I, you know, what among things that we shared, I think, was just, like, a
broad, a
skepticism about power.
You fell in love.
Right?
You fell in love with someone?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just, like, fell in love with someone and in the wrong circumstances and the
wrong person,
right?
And I handled it the wrong way.
How did you first feel like you've fallen in love?
Um, you know, I write about it in the book.
Yeah.
But, like, he's told you he loved you.
Mm-hmm.
You didn't say it back a couple times.
Mm-hmm.
Had it started before your profile of him?
Mm-hmm.
No, after.
'Cause you kind of flamed his, you dunked on his ass in that.
It was a critical profile.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, they were critical.
He hated it.
Yeah, he hated it.
He really hated it.
You are able to, like, write critically about subjects and then maintain, kind
of, their trust
in an interesting way.
But don't you find, like, if you're critical of someone but you're being honest
about it
and it's not coming from, it's not in bad faith, you're not trying to inflict
harm,
you're just being honest, that not, you know, oftentimes people are alright
with that?
No.
No, you don't find that?
No, no one likes to be criticized, even if it's legitimate.
How did New York Magazine find out about your relationship?
Like, how was that, how did they tell you about it?
They, um, the editor-in-chief confronted me in a meeting.
Had someone leaked it to them, or?
Um, yeah.
Uh, Kara Spisher had, um, brought it to them.
Uh, she later told the New York Times about that.
Yeah.
And she became aware of it from, you don't know, or?
I have my suspicions.
I guess, so you didn't feel like you were, like, on a house of cars that could
come something
like that.
No, it felt, I mean, it just felt really besides the point, which is, you know,
my mistake
and one of the delusions I was operating under was that, um, it didn't matter,
right?
And it, it mattered.
Everything matters so much, right?
Every little thing that we do here matters.
Yeah.
And so, I think, to me, it seemed, and part of what I spent a lot of the last
year thinking
about was, like, you don't just wake up one day and make a big mistake, right?
Mm-hm.
Like, if you're gonna make, if you're gonna fuck up in some, um, rapturous way,
it's probably
gonna be preceded by, like, imperceptible errors in judgment and, um, a lot of
letting
things slide with yourself that, sort of, amounts to, like, a, a misconfigured
worldview,
right?
Or, like, amounts to a path before you that's, like, gone awry.
And that was important for me to assess because a lot of people had told me, um,
you know,
when I was fired from New York Magazine, a lot of people had said, like, oh,
like, fuck
it, just continue to cover the election, you should take this assignment or
that assignment,
and you should just pretend that this didn't happen, you should be shameless.
And it was, like, this expectation that, um, that I should or that I could
assume the sort
of shameless posture that animates so much of American life now.
Yeah.
Um, and certainly animates, um, the kind of, um, um, um, powerful social strata
in American
life.
And that, I couldn't do that, you know?
So, you, you, you, are you saying you, like, chose to remove yourself because
of the,
the kind of ethics violation?
Or was it because everyone fucking hated you?
Well, I was fired, right?
Both, right?
Both.
Like, I was fired.
Um, I also was, I also fled out to the west coast and I was really scared and I
was, like,
in hiding and I didn't want to be found.
And I, um, I was scared of the, the person who's now writing those, um, sub-stack
things.
And I didn't really know, like, um, everything had shifted completely in my
life.
Like, it had been one way for a really long time.
Um, and I didn't know what to do.
And so, I just, um, but it also just struck me that, like, personally, as an
interior matter,
it was, like, this big spiritual event and, like, my, uh, moral error, um, was
important.
Like, it was important that I take that seriously.
And I became really grateful that it had happened because it felt like, I think
I write in the book
about how it felt like, like, the hand of God had come and, like, swatted me
off the path that I was on.
Yeah.
And I became very grateful for that, that the only thing really lost was public
standing and a job rather than something much more serious.
These days, in any industry, there's a tremendous amount of nepotism.
Yeah.
You're, you're a self-made individual.
Yeah.
You're from a working class background.
Yeah.
If you are looking at losing that ten years of, like, your work product.
It's impossible.
You're on that trajectory.
Do you, could you, could you continue to, that trajectory?
Or, I feel like it's knocked off course and it kind of.
I'm on a different, but I was on a different trajectory, right?
Like, I, when, when that happened last year, um, when I was fired and, and, uh,
when I,
you know, was writing the materials at first, it became American Canto.
Yeah.
Um, I was already on a different trajectory at that point, right?
And that was okay.
And I was interested in that.
And I, um, and that was necessary for me to have the perspective required
to write that book.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, I couldn't, when you're really, I write about how, um, something can
become so familiar,
you can become so close to something that it ceases to be familiar.
You're running for president.
That it becomes, that it becomes a foreign.
You're running for president.
Yeah.
I think you are.
Um, and I, how old do you have to be?
35.
And when's the next one?
20, 20?
Yeah, but you're 21.
I would, I would be able to do it.
I'd be 35, I think.
Oh yeah, you're 32.
Right?
Jesus Christ.
But, so, but my point was, it's like, I was already on a different path.
And I was alright with that.
Like, I was grateful to be on that other path than to be, like, interested and
to have the
perspective to, to synthesize that 10 year period.
So what's the path now?
But it wasn't, I, I mean, this book came out like a week ago.
Yeah, but like, when you're looking ahead, because where the book leaves you
and where you're
at right now, sorry to be a Jewish mother and tell you what's going on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like, you're, it isn't, it isn't a place of, that's like, of.
But you're talking about career and you're talking about material things.
For life.
I'm not though.
What do you mean?
I mean, this book is, to me it was, it was this spiritual, moral event, right?
I understand, yeah.
And this book is a creative effort about, in some sense, the spiritual process
of understanding
this 10 year thing, understanding my fuck up, understanding where I fit and
where the corrosion
of my character fit within this broader story about the corrosion of the
American character
in this 10 year period.
And to me, it's like, I'm not so concerned with the, like, nothing can be taken
from you
that didn't belong to you.
Yeah.
Right?
If some, like, nothing can be taken from you that wasn't handed to you unjustly
to begin
with.
And there's no such thing as, like, justice in public narratives.
There's such a thing as poetic justice in public narratives.
But, like, the only justice is knowing that you do not share the qualities that
the people
who have behaved unjustly towards you have.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
So I'm not, I'm not so worried about all that.
Like, I, I'm proud of American Canto.
I think it's valuable, but I also was aware the whole time that maybe it wouldn't
be considered
valuable for, like, 10 or 30 years.
But you feel as if you've, like, proud of your work.
Yeah.
That's what you're saying.
Yeah.
What I, what I'm seeing, and maybe I'm reading between the lines, is like, well,
do you think
being so successful so young, like, kind of robbed you of an early adulthood?
And that's why I'm fucking up now.
I don't know.
I'm just asking you.
Maybe.
Maybe.
You know the writer Annie Hamilton?
I know Annie.
Yeah.
She's an actress, I thought.
Well, I, I guess I think of her as a writer, but she's an actress too.
The writer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's an actress too, and she's hilarious.
I love her.
But she said something really funny once.
Um, I can't remember if it was in, like, a piece or a tweet or something, but,
um, that
people always used to say that she was an old soul, and then at a certain point,
or that
she was mature for her age, and then at a certain point they stopped saying
that.
Uh-huh.
Like, probably something similar to me.
Yeah.
Do you think you have to catch up on, like, 24 now?
Um.
Because you were chilling with Trump the whole time?
No, I think I'm good on, like, fucking up for now.
I don't know.
You, maybe, I don't know.
What's, what do they, what do you guys get up to?
Zach?
Zach?
Yeah.
What's, what's, like, the vibe over there?
Zach here?
Yeah, no, no.
I mean, like, like, for what you do, like, what are the, what kind of stuff do
you do?
Zach is a band.
Okay.
Yeah.
What's that?
He plays guitar.
You should learn guitar.
What?
Are you going to learn guitar?
I really want to get my pilot's license.
Oh, pilot's license.
Yeah.
That's my goal.
That'd be cool.
That'd be cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Trump didn't call me back.