Brett Cooper — The Political Reporter That Slept With Her Subjects | Episode 97

Guys, I'm sorry, but it has to be done. We have to talk about the woman who sexed RFK Jr. All right, I know that that was an absolutely insane introduction, but that is in fact what we have to do today. We need to talk about Olivia Nuzi. Now, if you're sitting at home and you're like, "God, I I feel like I've heard of that name." Yes, you definitely have. So, if you were following the Trump campaign back in 2024, 2023, you probably heard of Olivia Nuzi.

She is a political journalist was is I guess still is a political journalist and she basically broke the political airwaves when they came out that she had an alleged affair while covering the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now that was the first time that I had ever heard of Livby Nessie. Like I'm in the media world. I you know pitterpatter with the journalists. I you know talk with them. I do their interviews but I am not in like the journalism world.

And so she was not a figure that I was very acquainted with. And let me just tell you that after the last 24 hours, I am far too acquainted with this woman. And after this episode, you will be as well. And 24 hours ago, I really didn't care about Olivia Nazi. I didn't really care about that story. I knew that it had happened. I knew that she had like, you know, been fired or not been fired. She had left her job. She had escaped to the West Coast to, you know, put the pieces of her life back together.

I knew that she was writing a book about the entire thing. But like that was not something that I was focusing on. That was until yesterday when I read a Substack article from her ex- fiance absolutely dragging her name through the mud. I texted my team jokingly two days ago and said a wicked lady's reaction or dramatic reading of Olivia Nuzi's ex hanging her out to dry. Now yesterday, as you guys know based on the episode, I was far more interested in Ariana and Cynthia Orivo's lesbian affair.

Not lesbian, but you know what I'm saying. Hence what I did. But now things have changed because I continue to go down the rabbit hole. I went so deep into the rabbit hole that this was me last night in the car with Alex. This woman said explaining the nuzzy lizard drama to my normal boyfriend who has no idea who these people are. We had like a 45minute drive into town last night. And I mean I held him captive. I was like you need to know exactly what is going on.

And now that's going to be me attempting to break down all of this for you guys as we also dive into why this story is so relevant considering our fractured media landscape. Now, before we dive into that thrilling story, make sure that you like this episode and subscribe to the channel if you've not already. And of course, ring that notification bell to make sure that you stay up to date on all of our uploads. All right, so let's just dive right into this because this does feel like very niche content.

Even though it's a bit more mainstream now, it does feel niche, which is why I opted against covering the story earlier in the week, but it just keeps growing and it is now so viral that I actually think it is becoming mainstream. But the cast of characters and their background, their lore is still a lot to take in. So, I'm going to try to break it down. So again, Olivia Nuzi, political journalist. It all came out last year.

There was some affair between her and RFK Jr., but it seems like allegedly it was a bit more one-sided, like she was texting, he wasn't really responding, but still it broke politics last year. And then this year, she announced her tell all book, and it is coming out at the beginning of December. And so she has been doing press. She's back on the scene. She got a glowing profile in the New York Times, which basically seems like it was written by a guy who was in love with her.

You're going to see there's a lot of men that are in love with her at the end of the story. And also, Vanity Fair posted excerpts from this forthcoming book. But again, no one was really caring. Like, you know, Olivia Nzi poo poo. That was so last year. Nobody was really paying attention outside of this niche media journalist world until her ex- fiance Ryan Liza decided to drop some bombs. And guys, that is where it got interesting because if Miss Olivia was going to air out parts of their relationship and how the relationship inevitably ended and be glazed by the press, then he was also going to share his truth as he should.

And guys, this Substack piece is the most remarkable piece of literature I've ever read. I am specifically choosing the word literature because it is simply that good. Now, this man, he posted the link to this article on X with no caption, nothing. He just dropped the bomb and it racked up millions upon millions of impressions. And again, it is written like like a Jane Austin novel. I mean, it is truly remarkable. I can't read it all to you.

I'm going to link it below so you guys can go read it. You can pause it and go read it now. Actually, don't cuz I want you to be part of this cliffhanger. But I'm going to give you kind of the run through of it. But basically, he lays out their relationship. It had been, you know, tumultuous on again, off again. He makes a metaphor about how their love story was like an invasive species of bamboo that was growing in their backyard.

He talks about their ups and downs. And then he takes us to the day that he learned she was cheating on him. And the story goes that Olivia had just returned back to their home after a work trip where she was covering a presidential candidate. And as he's going through her bag because there's this whole thing about how like he takes care of her, he's putting her shoes away, he's like putting her bag away, he finds a pad of paper from the hotel where she was staying.

And the first line that he reads as he picks up this pad of paper is this. And now we're going to get into his piece. quote, "If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house," Olivia had written, I would still thirst for you. So, this is the first thing her fianceé reads. "Unfortunately, the lack of a water tower on our Georgetown home's roof ruled me out as the notes intended recipient." I flipped to another page and saw a name on the first line of an unfinished love letter to him that included enough details to confirm a physical relationship in the hint of some kind of falling out.

My heart stopped when I realized who he was. He was a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well known for a sex scandal. But more importantly, he was a presidential candidate, a source, and the subject of Olivia's recent profile for The New Yorker. I started to build a mental map of the potential blast zone, ticking through the concentric circles of our lives that her recklessness could shatter, the privacy of my children, the wedding Olivia was pressuring me to plan her journalism career and our book project.

Imagine that you're me or imagine that you're here. You're reading this article and the whole time you're thinking, "Oh my god. Oh my god. Is RFK? This is the RFK story. This is how we found out. This is crazy." Until you get to the final line. This is how he ends the piece. I was sure our relationship was over. And certainly our book project was dead. She 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?

I looked at the date on her aborted letter to Mark. March 5th, 2020. Just a few days ago. I called my agent. We have a big problem. I said Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford. That's not Bobby. That is not Bobby Kennedy. We now have a completely new earthshattering story that is in the mix. And he just ends it right there. A cliffhanger. Now I'm going to continue that cliffhanger by telling you guys about my friends over at Bon Charge.

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Again, that is helixleep.com/bred for 27% off any purchase. Make sure you enter our show name into the post-purchase survey so that they know that we sent you. All right, so jumping back into the story, thanks to Ryan Liza, her ex- fiance, thanks to his Substack, we now know that she cheated on her fiance with at least two subjects of her articles. And the first one that he is unveiling in this part one of his Olivia series cuz apparently this going to be multi-part thing is Mark Sanford who was the former governor of South Carolina and was a presidential candidate back in 2020.

So now obviously after reading the Substack article I am completely roped in. I am obsessed. Like 30 seconds ago I did not care at all and now I crave information. I need to know every single thing about this woman and everything that she went through with this man. like I care about this insane story in this woman who only moments ago was completely and utterly uninteresting to me. And I think the same goes for millions of people online because suddenly everyone on X and on Blue Sky was interested extremely interested in her new book and the excerpts that she had published in Vanity Fair.

And guys, I know that this is a a big thing for me to say, but those excerpts, it might be even more spectacular than her ex's Substack. It is spectacular because the writing is just so atrocious. And I'm going to read you some of that, don't worry. But the one thing that we do learn throughout this entire story is that Olivia Nuzi was certifiably obsessed with RFK Jr. who in her book she is calling very coily. She's calling him the politician.

And you might ask, okay, well Brett, allegedly this woman is sleeping with a bunch of politicians that she's covering for her story. So how do we know that it's him? How do we know that the politician is RFK Jr.? Okay, well friends, I hate to tell you this, but there is only one politician who thought that he had a worm in his brain. And Olivia loved that. She wrote this. This is an excerpt from her book. I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny.

I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a mad man. 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. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. Quote, "Baby, don't worry." He said, "It's not a worm."

A doctor he trusted had reviewed the scans of his brain obtained by the New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was likely not a parasite at all. He sighed. It was too late to interfere with what had already vaulted from the spheres of memes to the sphere of screwy legend. But at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain. I mean, guys, poetic genius. Are you not enthralled?

Now, after that was posted on X, because that was going viral, somebody responded in the comment section with this other excerpt. And again, I think saying that the woman is obsessed puts it mildly. All right, like all men, but more so he was a hunter in a literal sense. He used not a bullet but a bird. Like obviously we know that the politician is Bobby. He loves falcons. Thank you, Olivia. Anyway, he was not about a chase, but about a puzzle of logic and skill that amounted to a test of his selfmastery.

He was the mouse and the architect of his maze, the giver of his own pleasure and torment. He desired. He desired desiring. He desired being desired. He desired desire itself. I understood this just as I came to understand the range of his kinks and complexes and how they fit within what I thought I understood of his soul where he desired being desired and desiring. I like what the whole thing I added that last part, but I mean the whole thing is just remarkable.

Somebody posted another excerpt and said like this is the type of white folks drama that you usually watch at 9:00 p.m. on HBO. Yes, actually this is correct, but unfortunately Hollywood is not producing anything of value. So, we have to sit around and twiddle our fingers and wait for famous political journalists to cross ethical lines, sleep with a myriad of politicians, apparently, get fired, and then write tell all books in order for us to be entertained.

That is where we are in 2025. Now, here you might be thinking, Brett, this is just crazy. I'm ready to close up this episode, move on with my day. Ah, no, you're not done. Because things just continue to get progressively worse for Miss Olivia because not only were people mocking, you know, the paragraphs from her book, but they started to dig up her old tweets. And let this be a lesson, especially to the young people who are watching this.

Whatever you put online, it will always be online. You can never delete anything. And Olivia Nuzzi should be in the textbooks teaching young people this because the digital footprint that this woman has is certifiably insane. But I'm grateful for it because suddenly everything made sense. I mean, take this post back from 2019 when she was getting deep with Mark Sanford. She posted, "I spent some time in South Carolina with Mark Sanford for New York Magazine.

Somebody comments and said he looks happy." and she says, "I tend to have that effect." Okay. Well, clearly, Olivia, it was not your reporting that had that effect on him. It was obviously something else. Now, moving on, people quickly went even deeper back into the archives of Olivia Nuzi, and they were quick to find when she reposted a certain article back in the day. And boy, was it ironic because back in 2015, Olivia wrote, "Why does Hollywood think female reporters sleep with their sources?"

Uh, ma'am, maybe you had not done that yet, but I mean, the writing was literally on the wall. Also, did no one on your team consider your digital footprint before you decided to write a tell all book? I mean, maybe she was not considering the beauty of her ex- fiance substack that would break this entire thing wide open. But I just feel like maybe that's something you should consider before you put your life out to the world for everyone to evaluate.

But guys, again, don't turn off the episode yet because we are not even close to the best part. Now, another insane reveal from Ryan Liza's Substack piece was that Olivia had been in a multi-year relationship with Keith Oberman. And if you're like, Brett, that name sounds familiar. Yes, it is that Keith Oberman, the deranged Lib Onyx. And if you're thinking, man, Brett, like he's really old. That's kind of weird. Yes.

I mean, Keith Bberman is so old that I don't even know why he is famous in the first place, but apparently over a decade ago, she and Keith started dating and had some sort of sugar daddy relationship. And this is what Ryan is talking about. And he said, you know, he when he started dating her had to help her untangle the situation with Keith, but that he had funded her life, put her up in an apartment, paid for her college, decked her out in Cardier jewelry.

It was a whole thing. So now all of that is also out in the open, which also brings up some questionable tweets from Keith as well, like this one where back in 2017, he replied to a post from Olivia and said, "Stop normalizing monsters in exchange for access, Olivia." Well, Keith, I kind of think you're included in that situation. But again, suddenly we realize, oh my god, it's not a metaphor. He was actually being serious.

And this is especially on the nose, considering this other excerpt of her book. No, we are not done, guys. We are going to continue reading. I mean to tell you of the canyon where voices carried, the place where monsters spoke to me, where I listened. where I found that as fortune or curse would have it, I knew the language of monsters, where with news on my tongue and tears in my eyes, the role of town crier I interpret literally, I ran back over the hill to translate for those who could not stomach the thought of standing face to face with monsters, but required knowledge of monsters as the monsters acrewed ever more powerful as they revealed or converted ever more monsters among men.

I mean, at this rate, I think we can all just acknowledge that her type of writing is just incredibly dramatic, repetitive metaphors. And you know what? I love it because it is so certifiably insane. Now, if you don't get what she's saying here, in my opinion, if I'm going to like English major my way through this excerpt, is that she is talking about her role as a journalist to interpret these monsters, these politicians for the people so that they can stay informed, which is ironic considering that she was much more focused on getting in bed with the monsters and actually informing the people.

Anyway, moving on. And another person pulled up an old tweet where Olivia said, "Well, this proves that my ideal friends are 50 to 60 year old men." I mean like everything makes sense. Like her entire digital footprint, Keith Oberman, Mark Sanford, Bobby Jr., her ex- fiance, the one who wrote the subtract, who is almost 20 years older than her. I mean, like, at least she's honest. And you know what? She was honest about that fact from a very young age.

Because again, guys, we aren't done. We are now getting to my very, very favorite part of this episode and this story because people online, ah, it's so incredible. They discovered something else, something even better, even more remarkable and unexpected. They uncovered Olivia's past attempt at becoming a teen pop star with her breakout song that she titled Jailbait. And no, you did not mishar that. The song is titled Jailbait.

That is real. In fact, because the internet never dies, here's an article from Pop Justice about her and her pop star persona, Libby. Some of the lyrics of this song read, "Deny your attention, but I've got no shame. 16 will get you 20. Don't even think about it, baby, because I'm not your girlfriend. I'm not the girl next door. Not your girlfriend. I'll give you just enough then leave you wanting more. Jailbait. I'm jailbait.

You try to stay away, but you can't obey. Okay, now think about this song and then think about the fact that just a couple years later, she ended up in a sugar baby relationship with Keith freaking who was like 40 or 50 years old by that point. And if you're thinking to yourself, gosh, like Brett reading those lyrics, that just was not good enough for me. Don't worry guys, because somebody on the internet had an archived version of her old MySpace page and through that archived version, they found the producer of her music.

And from there, they found a Soundcloud link. And yes, we have the song. [music] Deny your attraction, but I've got no shame. [music] 16 will get you 20. I've got you locked for life. Don't even think about it [music] because baby I'm not your girlfriend. Not [music] the girl next door. Not [music] >> so good. [music] >> Oh my god. It's literally insane. Like the fact that we have this, the fact that 24 hours ago I did not care and then here I am reacting to her music from 20 years ago.

Guys, the internet is a scary place, but it is also a beautiful, beautiful place. Now, what is even more insane, and I will leave you with this, I promise, is how she described herself and her character of Lizzie. She described her music on her MySpace page as this. The day that Madonna released erotica. The day that Andy Warhol made his first film. The day that Freddy Mercury sang his last note. The day that Judy Garland conceived Liza Minnelli.

The day that Britney Spears told you to hit it one more time. The day that Sher first met a sequin. I mean, it's her whole thing is like repetition. I think we're getting that now. The day that Candy Darling took her last breath. The day that MC Jagger first strut across the stage. The day that Pamela Anderson was introduced to silicone. The day that David Bowie sang Lady Stardust. The day that Michael Jackson first slipped on a white glove was the day that Livy was born.

That's her. And she ends it by saying, "Livy is a pop chorus. Livy is a rock ballad. Livy is a hip-hop beat. Liv is the past. Liv is the future. Livy is now. And she is about to blow your mind." Yeah. I mean, listen guys, you have to give it to Olivia because I have never encountered a more confident, brazen woman. Maybe that's the only way that I can describe this. Like the fact that this is a real life human being and not a character in a ridiculous Netflix movie or a soap opera is truly impressive.

Good for us. Good for society that we have such incredible characters to entertain us. Somebody commented and said she was a child actress, model, and a failed pop musician and people are still acting like her behavior is mysterious or her situation is complex. She has the psychological temperament of a messy reality show contestant who seeks fame. Not much more to it. Correct. I think that is what we all have discovered today.

Another person, Fisher King on X, said, "One thing I will say for Livia Nuzi, she's just an open social climber who will use her crotch to get what she wants without apology. She hasn't accused anyone falsely of rape. She just uses people. Doesn't really shake them down. An honorable gold digger." And I read this and I was like, "Yeah, you know what? You're right. The bar is on the floor. At least she did not need two men.

Good for you, Olivia. Here we go." I was so close to just running with that. I was so close to inserting this tweet. Moving on, you know, leaving you guys to that message. I was so close. But then I remembered that actually Olivia had done something far worse. To take a step back here, you guys might be wondering, you know, okay, this is all hilarious. I cannot believe that this blew up in her face. This is just wild.

But why did her ex- fiance decide to drop this bomb? Why now? When the book is about RFK Jr. and not him, what does he need to prove? Well, guys, when the news broke about her and Bobby last year, her fianceé left her. I guess that texting this specific politician was the last straw for him. But regardless, he left her and Olivia decided to retaliate. She filed police reports. She went to court. She requested a protection order against Ryan Liza, claiming that he was harassing her and that he had orchestrated this entire smear campaign to date her down and force her to lose her job.

Here's a headline about that. Olivia Nuzi accuses ex- fiance of orchestrating blackmail campaign after RFK Jr. relationship revelations. Now, the article cites the court filing that reads that Nuzi had claimed that Liza had explicitly threatened to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation, a threat he has since carried out. She is blaming her ex- fiance for her alleged affair and for that blowing up her career as a journalist.

Now, the article goes on and says, "The accusations were made by Nuzi in a filing this week before a judge in Washington DC Superior Court. Liza has reportedly denied the allegations." Now, in turn, obviously, this all blew up. created an even darker stain on the reputation of her ex- fiance. And yes, he denied all of this. He said, "No, I had nothing to do with this." And then months later, Olivia quietly withdrew her request and she moved on.

So, while she did not try to me too the men that she was covering and sleeping with, she did try to destroy the man who had picked up the pieces of her life when she was a young woman and had stuck with her for almost a decade through all of this. So, yeah, I'd say that the man had a motive to get ahead of her book. Now, all of this is obviously insane. It's funny. I have had a hell of a time recording this episode for you guys.

But if I may make a metaphor in the style of Olivia Nuzi, this does feel like a bleak representation of our current media landscape. Like completely absorbed, completely out of touch, lacking in integrity and ethics and trust, focused more on themselves and their subjects, even sexually, than the people that they are supposed to be informing and writing for. As journalists, that is your job. And obviously, that's not happening.

not in the mainstream world or with Olivia Nuzi. So, if you're ever sitting around and wondering to yourself, you know, why is trust in journalists at a all-time low? I mean, if you didn't get it after the false accusations, if you didn't get it after COVID, all the lies, the celebrations of the murder of Charlie Kirk, well, then maybe you'll get it after Olivia Nuzi.