Name: OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, RFK Scandal, American Canto
Uploaded: 2025-12-17T23:00:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, RFK Scandal, American Canto' from The Adam Friedland Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, RFK Scandal, American Canto' from The Adam Friedland Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-17. Transcript available.

OLIVIA NUZZI Talks Trump, RFK Scandal, American Canto

What 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.
Do you think you have to catch up on, like, 24 now? 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. What do you guys get up to? Zach? What's, like, the vibe over
there?
Yeah, no, no. I mean, like, for what you do, like, what kind of stuff do you do?
Okay.
What's that? He plays guitar. Are you gonna learn guitar?
I really want to get my pilot's license.
Oh, pilot's license.
Yeah. That's my goal for 2026.
That'd be cool. That'd be cool.
Adam Friedland Show. Oh, my Adam Friedland Show. Oh, my Adam Friedland Show. Oh,
my Adam Friedland Show. Oh, my TV.
Welcome back to the Adam Friedland Show. I'm Adam Friedland. I'm going back on
the road with Caleb Pitts.
Emerald City Comedy Club, Seattle, Washington, January 22nd to 24th. We're
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will all be selling out because I'm fucking famous.
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season.
Presents.
Presents.
Get your dad a hat.
I think people's parents might have seen some of the show.
My guest this week is Olivia Nuzzi.
Nuzzi, if you're not familiar, made a name for herself as a correspondent for
the Daily Beast, where she covered Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
And subsequently, she was hired in 2017 by New York Magazine, where she
published various well-regarded profiles on the president.
In September 2024, news surfaced that she had been engaged in an inappropriate
relationship with current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
Jr.
that was described as emotional and digital in nature.
She was subsequently fired from New York Magazine and has just released a book
about the experienced American canto, which has been overshadowed by a five-part
substack published by her ex, Ryan Lizza, alleging that Nuzzi had acted as a de
facto political operative for Kennedy, among other accusations.
Guys, uh, the lesson here is that journalists should not be famous.
And I stand by that statement and I will die on that hill.
So, let's get to it.
Please enjoy my interview.
I don't know why I hit her.
So, let's get to it.
Please enjoy my interview with Olivia Nuzzi.
Scandalous.
I think it was, I hope you liked it.
I hope I, was it good?
You guys liked it?
I wonder if people, yeah, okay.
Great.
Alright, good.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome journalist, author, author of the new book
on Simon & Schuster, American Canto, Olivia Nuzzi.
Olivia.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Thank you for doing the show.
Thank you.
You're a nice outfit.
She didn't want to do the walkout and...
What are you at?
But you're, you know, you're a good guest.
I'm, I'm, it's my house and you have to, it's like I'm being like the guy who
asks his friend to come over and play video games and then he doesn't let him
play.
Is that the type of guy?
No, I'm sorry.
I'm scared right now.
Why am I scared right now?
I don't know.
Why are you scared?
I don't know.
Because I'm like, because you, what, you yelled at me about, what was that the
Hitler thing we were fighting about on the phone?
You just kept talking over me.
No, you said something insane and then...
Oh, yeah.
You said that Donald Trump is selfish.
Are you afraid of women?
Uh, when I get yelled at by them, I am, yeah.
I didn't yell.
I don't want to get yelled at.
I wouldn't say I yelled.
I, I don't know what's, in that situation I'm just constantly like, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.
It feels terrible.
Anyway, I've, I've heard your name a bunch.
You're a journalist.
You've interviewed the president multiple times.
Um, you're attached to various political campaigns.
You made a name for yourself very young and you've recently just published this
book.
Um, how, how does it feel to get it out?
Fine.
Fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I felt like I was sort of, um, I started covering Donald Trump in 2015.
Yeah.
I guess I interviewed him for the first time in 2014.
And I didn't know that when I signed up to do that, then it was going to become
a whole
era, right?
You caught a big one.
Yeah.
Um, and so I felt like this book was sort of completing this thought that I had
begun forming
ten years earlier.
Uh huh.
You know.
If I'm wrong, like journalists, you, you guys all hate each other.
Is that the deal?
Is it a band of brothers or is it?
I don't hate anyone.
I, I think that like what, one thing that kind of, I've been, I'm resistant to
is that,
I just had, um, a sports journalist on.
Uh huh.
And he said that, or a pundit actually, he's not a journalist.
But he said that the, I was like, is it kind of like, is sports coverage kind
of celebrity
gossip at this point, you know?
And he said some of the things that get the highest engagement isn't even
related to the
players.
It's, it's one pundit being mad at another pundit, right?
Okay.
And that's kind of become the news.
Where it's like the people covering the news kind of are the, the, like stars,
if anything.
You know, is it, am I off there?
Yeah.
I mean, I think, um, there's a lot of manufactured public drama.
Yeah.
And there are a lot of people who are sort of operating in bad faith in public
spaces who
are just trying to perpetuate it for, you know, personal gain of some kind.
But if you see two journalists popping off on, against each other, if you see
our girl,
if you see our girl Taylor just going at another one, people are like, people
are like locked
in on it, you know, on Twitter or something, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like going back, I mean, it's not a new thing for journalists to have like sort
of a personal
brand, right?
I don't know.
I mean, Edward R. Murrow, like his most famous-
Cigarette.
His most famous moments were often when he deviated from the straight news
stuff and he expressed
an opinion, right?
Yeah.
And it expressed something of his character.
So I don't think it's totally new.
It's just a new medium.
Well that was new in that era, right?
In this day and age it feels like kind of more, and I don't think it's
necessarily a bad thing,
but people are upfront about-
I think it's a bad thing, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think just there's always going to be sort of friction when different
practices
are evolving on different mediums, right?
Yeah.
One thing I noticed like when I've read your profiles and they were like, I
really loved them.
Thanks.
But like the way you write, in your writing, it does track like you're, like it
could be
about Rihanna or something.
Politicians are celebrities now, you know?
It's about character, right?
Yeah.
Like what I'm always interested in is understanding the human beings that I'm
writing about, right?
Yeah.
And for most of the last 10 years covering kind of Trump's rise to dominance-
You caught a big one.
That's been about just understanding the people like seeking or influencing-
Yeah.
Or clinging to power.
Uh-huh.
And when a character wants something, you know, it's a good engine-
Yeah.
For a story and a good way to sort of see their character brought into sharp
relief.
Yeah.
I mean, he's the most fascinating probably public character-
He's very simple.
Of my lifetime.
I mean, he's very simple.
Yeah.
And sometimes I've had the experience talking to him where I'll be asking a
question,
something about his psychology, and I'll see him start to lose interest in the
question.
And I realize like, oh, I've thought about your inner life so much more than
you ever have.
I love the parts in the book where you write about Trump.
Thanks.
They're like so three-dimensional.
And he is, he is as a character just like-
He's fascinating.
He's fascinating.
Yeah.
He's singular.
He's strange.
I mean, there's this one exchange with him.
I think it's in the book where he was talking about how he's not weird.
He's not a weird person.
Yeah, it is in the book.
Yeah.
And I was like, okay, well, are you- would you say you're unusual?
And he's, okay, yeah, I'm unusual, but I'm not weird.
I'm the most not weird person.
I guess there's a connotation more of- unusual, you could be like the cool art
kid.
Unusual is more neutral.
Yeah.
And weird is more of an accusation, I think.
You're from New Jersey.
Mm-hm.
You know, the thing of- your book is like kind of like a shoebox of like
photographs, right?
They're like just little pictures, I feel like.
Is that accurate?
Yeah, it's like an expressionist.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It's not like a linear as much as like kind of images in different times, right?
Yeah, I was trying to just sort of replicate the experience of the last 10
years and with
my, you know, proximity as this like official witness to Trump's rise.
So cool.
What it feels like.
You were remarkably successful, remarkably young, right?
And unsuccessful.
I know, I mean like you were like kind of in the, you know, press pool in the
West Wing
like at like what, 22, 23?
Something like that.
Is that- was that stressful at any point?
No, it was just like a lot.
Or you just took it in stride?
It was just- it's easy when you have a mission.
Like when you- I think there's like a- the stakes of politics are inherent when
you're
covering it.
You never have to wonder if what you're doing matters, because it obviously
does.
And that's like a great gift in some ways, right?
Because I think-
I think you grew up fast, it feels.
It seems.
Like you became an adult quickly.
Well, but he was- it was his first time there as well, right?
But he's the president.
But there was something sort of- and I felt like I understood something of his
psychology
because he grew up in Queens, right?
He grew up in Jamaica Estates.
He's a-
I grew up in New Jersey.
Outer borough trash.
But when you're on the periphery, when you're outer borough trash, when you're
on the periphery-
His real estate too is disgusting.
You're always looking at the center of Manhattan.
Yeah.
And like his whole life seemed to be about getting there.
Right.
And then, you know, ascending to whatever midtown heights he wanted to ascend.
Honestly, good for him.
But it's the personality of a striver in him, right?
And like this kind of resentment that he always had about Manhattan.
It was interesting to watch it transported to politics.
One thing I thought was an interesting thing from the book is that you
associated New York
City like from a very young age with Trump.
Did you feel like you knew him kind of like- you've known him for a while or
something?
Well, he was just like this great tabloid villain of my childhood, right?
And then The Apprentice premiered when I think I was in like the third or
fourth grade.
Yeah.
He was always in the papers that my father always brought home.
The New York Post and the Daily News.
He's what?
He's an intellectual.
I mean, he worked for the Sanitation Department in New York.
Yeah.
And I just was used to seeing him every place.
And I don't remember a time when I was not aware of him.
Yeah.
Right?
He's in Home Alone, too.
And there's this scene in the book where I just- I remember being in my dad's
truck
on Central Park South.
I have an excerpt for you.
And him pointing out that Dona