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Tucker Carlson has now entered the never-ending Nuzzigate saga.
In Part 5 of his ongoing series about his ex-fiancée Olivia Nuzzi’s affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the subsequent fallout that ultimately culminated in Nuzzi publishing a critically reviled book and losing yet another journalism job, former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza revealed the behind-the-scenes role the ex-Fox News star played as the scandal broke.
According to Lizza, Carlson had become one of Nuzzi’s confidants amid the drama over the Kennedy relationship and warned the one-time political media star that her life was in danger and “offered to send her a shotgun.”
On top of that, an increasingly conspiratorial Carlson thought the story was a “grander deep-state plot” hatched by Israel to “destroy Trump by destroying Bobby.”
Having previously alleged that Nuzzi also cheated on him with ex-presidential candidate Mark Sanford and acted as Kennedy’s political operative while working for New York magazine, Lizza kicked off his latest Substack episode by diving into Nuzzi’s efforts to get ahead of the story of her affair with Kennedy.
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Tucker Carlson thought that the story about Olivia Nuzzi’s affair with RFK Jr. was a part of a ‘grander deep state plot’ to take down Donald Trump and Kennedy. (Getty Images)
With Kennedy backing Donald Trump after having suspended his own independent presidential campaign, word began to spread inside the New York offices about Nuzzi’s relationship with the now-current Health and Human Services secretary.
According to Lizza, even though he and Nuzzi had broken up, he spent several days with her in September of last year trying to convince her to disclose the truth to her editor before the story became public. At that point in time, media reporter Oliver Darcy was already inquiring about it, and tech podcaster Kara Swisher said she already knew about the situation.
Instead, Lizza claimed that Nuzzi “pulled together a small group that would serve as a sort of crisis communications war room for her as the scandal widened in the coming days,” which included her agent from Creative Artists Agency and a former CNN spokesman. In the end, however, their attempts to kill the story didn’t work as Darcy ended up breaking it in his recently launched newsletter.
“And this is when things took a much darker turn. Olivia and her colleagues in the war room workshopped the idea and came up with a more menacing version that they gave to Oliver: he could not publish the story because if he did, it would send Olivia’s lunatic ex-fiance into a fit of rage and endanger Olivia,” Lizza added.
After Darcy published his story, Lizza asserted that Nuzzi was briefly “elated” because “she and Bobby were working together again,” noting that the two had coordinated their statements together after Kennedy had cut things off with her.
“Up until then, Bobby had been ghosting her, so Olivia, according to her friends, was ecstatic to be back in touch, even if it was for the narrow purpose of protecting him and humiliating her,” Lizza wrote.
“The chance to once again collaborate as Bobby’s secret political operative, this time to help Trump get elected, so he could make Bobby a cabinet secretary, was exhilarating to Olivia,” he added.
At the same time, Lizza noted that the last time he personally saw Nuzzi, which was just before the story broke, she expressed fears over what Kennedy would do to her if their affair became public. “If anyone ever finds out, I’m afraid Bobby will kill me,” she supposedly told Lizza.
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Ryan Lizza said that Nuzzi told him that she was worried Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would have her killed to keep details of their relationship secret. (Getty Images for CBS News)
Amid Nuzzi’s crisis management team’s efforts to portray him as a “scorned ex” and a “stalker,” Lizza said that he was suddenly contacted by Gavin de Becker, Kennedy’s security adviser who Lizza likened to a “Bond villain.” According to Lizza, de Becker texted him, urging him to look up his Wikipedia page – which said de Becker’s life was “mired in violence” – and to “call when practical.”
While Lizza said he never called de Becker back, the Kennedy security specialist would “hover in the shadows” in an effort to keep more lurid details about the anti-vaccine activist from coming to light.
“He would occasionally check in on Olivia, according to her friends, just to make sure she remained loyal and was protecting Bobby’s secrets,” Lizza wrote of de Becker. “At one point, Olivia told Tucker Carlson about the details of one of de Becker’s calls to her. Tucker told her she should fear for her life and offered to send her a shotgun.”
Lizza then described an instance in which Nuzzi spoke to Wall Street Journal media reporter Isabella Simonetti about a story on the fallout from the affair, noting that Nuzzi had tape-recorded the conversation and shared it with Carlson, who asked him to give it to Kennedy.
“Olivia wanted Bobby to have proof that she remained loyal and that she continued to lie for him. Bobby and Tucker, I was reliably told, had dinner during this period, and they debated how high up the plot to destroy Bobby went,” Lizza claimed.
“Tucker, by then, was telling people, including Olivia, that Bobby was being blackmailed by Israel. And in terms of conspiracy theorists, he was like the Alex Jones to Bobby’s Oliver Stone,” he continued. “Bobby just thought it was me, possibly working with Olivia. But Tucker thought it was a much grander deep-state plot to destroy Trump by destroying Bobby. He assumed I was just the tip of the spear.”
In the aftermath of Lizza’s Substack serial of the Nuzzi-Kennedy saga, the former Washington correspondent has lashed out at her ex-fiancé and accused him of publishing “revenge porn” to harm her. “Telling the truth is not harassment,” Lizza told The Independent in response to Nuzzi’s claims.
Meanwhile, her book American Canto – in which she detailed her affair with Kennedy, though she only called him “The Politician” throughout – has been savaged by critics and is a commercial flop. (It currently sits at #20,205 on the Amazon Best Sellers list.)
Additionally, amid the additional allegations about her journalistic ethics breaches with Kennedy, Vanity Fair “mutually agreed” to part ways with Nuzzi just a few months after announcing she had joined the publication as its West Coast editor.
