Keith Olbermann Implies He Dodged a Bullet with Olivia Nuzzi After Her Ex’s Latest Claims

NEED TO KNOW

• Keith Olbermann is opening up about the latest allegations against his ex, political journalist Olivia Nuzzi

• Nuzzi made headlines last year for leaving New York magazine after news broke about her alleged sexting affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Following this week’s allegations that she also had an affair in 2020 with presidential candidate Mark Sanford, Olbermann posted a gif on X that implied he “dodged a bullet” in the relationship

Amid excerpts from a new memoir that detail her sexting scandal with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and allegations from her ex about a separate alleged affair with Republican presidential candidate Mark Sanford, another one of Olivia Nuzzi’s politically connected exes is speaking out.

Keith Olbermann responded on X this week to some of the details about his own four-year relationship with the journalist, who departed her post covering politics at New York Magazine last year after admitting to a “personal” relationship with Kennedy.

What seemed to first shock Olbermann were the new allegations about Sanford. Nuzzi’s ex, Ryan Lizza, alleged in a post to his newsletter, Telos News, on Monday, Nov. 17, that he discovered his then-girlfriend’s affair with the South Carolina politician while she was covering his run for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.

Lizza, now 51, alleged in his post that after he found notes that Nuzzi, now 32, had been writing to Sanford, now 65, she confessed that she was “infatuated” with the former governor, to the point of sending him “increasingly risqué pictures and texts” and fantasizing about a “rendezvous.”

At the time, the couple had been working on a book about the upcoming election together, which Lizza said he knew was dead after finding out that Nuzzi had crossed a “journalistic red line.”

“How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?” he wrote.

PEOPLE has reached out to representatives for Sanford, Nuzzi and Lizza for comment.

Following the newsletter’s release, Olbermann, 66, wrote on X, “Ryan Lizza appears to be accusing Olivia Nuzzi of an affair with Mark Sanford when she was covering HIM in 2020?”

He then replied with another post, writing simply, “this is me,” and adding a gif of Keanu Reeves’ Neo character from The Matrix bending time to acrobatically dodge multiple bullets.

Prior to her relationship with Lizza, Nuzzi had been romantically involved with Olbermann for several years. Lizza wrote in his newsletter that he had helped Nuzzi “untangle” herself from the former MSNBC reporter, alleging that she “felt stalked” by Olbermann after leaving him.

“He paid for her to attend college, outfitted her in Tom Ford and Hervé Léger dresses and some $15,000 worth of Cartier jewelry. Later, he covered her rent and furnished her apartment in a doorman building in the West Village. While Keith, who was 34 years older, was generous, there were strings attached,” Lizza wrote.

Olbermann responded to that passage in another post on X, writing, “Olivia and I lived together for 4+ years (4 b’days 4 Xmases 4 anniversaries) That’s like $1250 of jewelry per celebration. And her apartment was a studio.”

“And I made an f-ton then. What was I supposed to do? Get her Gift Certificates from Kmart?” he added.

He also completed the circle by sharing a photo of himself and RFK Jr. at a New York Mets game in 2011.

“This is seven years after this psycho Bobby Kennedy called me up at MSNBC and said I was his hero,” Olbermann wrote. “This might have been the first sign he was losing his mind.”

In her upcoming book, American Canto, Nuzzi recalls the emotional details of her alleged relationship with Kennedy, whom she refers to only as “the Politician.”

In an excerpt of the book published in Vanity Fair — where she now works as the West Coast Editor after being let go from New York — Nuzzi recalled how she felt about the jokes made about Kennedy during his 2024 presidential campaign, when he disclosed that he had a dead worm in his brain.

“I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein,” she wrote. “Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could.”

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While Nuzzi has been sharing her side of the story, Kennedy has not spoken much about their alleged affair.

A rep for the HHS head, who has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, previously released a statement claiming he “only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”

Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment from PEOPLE about Nuzzi’s book.

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