Cheryl Hines Says She Broke Out in Hives After Meeting Donald Trump

Cheryl Hines is opening up about a surprising physical response she experienced the first time she met former President Donald Trump.

In her memoir Unscripted, the actress and wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes that she met Trump shortly after he survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July 2024. At the time, Kennedy was still running for president. According to Hines, Trump called and asked Kennedy to travel to Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention was set to begin.

Hines said she booked her own flight so she could meet her husband right after his conversation with Trump. Instead, Kennedy’s security team brought her straight to the meeting at his request. She was escorted to a hotel suite, where she shook Trump’s hand and listened as he recounted the assassination attempt.

During the meeting, Hines wrote, Trump insisted Kennedy should receive Secret Service protection. He dictated notes to Susie Wiles, his current chief of staff, and posted a message about it on Truth Social.

Since Joe Biden was still president at the time, Trump had no authority to grant Secret Service coverage.

Hines recalled that as soon as she stepped out of the hotel suite, she suddenly broke out in hives. “I’ve never broken out in hives before, not once, but suddenly I had hives all up and down my arms and I could feel them making their way across my abdomen,” she wrote.

One of Kennedy’s staffers joked that she must be “allergic to President Trump,” she added.

Just 20 minutes after Trump’s post, Kennedy was informed he would indeed be getting Secret Service protection through a presidential order from Biden. But Hines wrote that she soon learned the coverage wouldn’t extend to their immediate family — unlike what is normally customary for other candidates’ spouses and children.

“As they talked, I could feel my hives make their way down my legs,” she wrote.

The symptoms kept intensifying. While Secret Service personnel discussed bomb sweeps at their home, Hines said her skin still showed no signs of calming.

Later, at dinner, she checked her reflection and saw her “bottom lip had swelled to the size of a baby carrot.”

“Was I still having an allergic reaction to something?” she wondered. “(It couldn’t have been President Trump, he was on the other side of Milwaukee.) Between my hives and my swollen lip, I was really a sight to see.”

That night, Hines and Kennedy called doctors for guidance. She took Benadryl, soaked in a Himalayan salt bath and monitored whether her throat felt like it was closing.

“My upper lip started to get involved and my bottom lip was close to splitting in two,” she wrote. “I looked like a casualty from Botched, the show about plastic surgery gone wrong.”

Eventually, she went to a walk-in clinic. The doctor told her he didn’t believe she was having an allergic reaction and instead asked, “Have you been under more stress than usual lately?”

She answered yes. The doctor replied that her body might be reacting to overwhelming stress and advised her to find ways to reduce it.

Hines promised she’d try. She was given steroids and an EpiPen just in case.

“I flew home with my EpiPen in one hand and hiding my crazy lips with the other,” she wrote. “It was the perfect kick-off to my new effort in finding a way to be less stressed … This was going to be easy.”

Hines has been making the media rounds to promote her book and recently appeared on The View. Afterward, she questioned whether the co-hosts had even read Unscripted and felt they were more interested in grilling her about her husband’s politics.

“You know, I was actually hoping that it was going to be more personal on The View,” she said while appearing on the Hot Mics with Billy Bush podcast. “But it was what it was.”

She continued, “I mean, I don’t think the ladies on The View asked me one question about my book. But, you know, that’s okay.”