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

Amid excerpts from a new memoir detailing her se*ting scandal with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and fresh accusations from an ex about a separate alleged affair with Republican presidential candidate Mark Sanford, another of Olivia Nuzzi’s politically connected former partners is weighing in.

Keith Olbermann responded on X this week to some of the claims about his own four-year relationship with Nuzzi, who left her role covering politics at New York Magazine last year after acknowledging a “personal” relationship with Kennedy.

What initially appeared to catch Olbermann’s attention were the new allegations involving Sanford. Nuzzi’s ex, Ryan Lizza, alleged in a post on his newsletter, Telos News, on Monday, Nov. 17, that he discovered his then-girlfriend’s alleged affair with the South Carolina politician while she was reporting on Sanford’s bid for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.

Lizza, now 51, wrote that after he found notes Nuzzi, now 32, had been writing to Sanford, now 65, she admitted she was “infatuated” with the former governor. According to Lizza, she sent Sanford “increasingly risqué pictures and texts” and fantasized about a “rendezvous.”

At the time, Lizza and Nuzzi were collaborating on a book about the upcoming election. Lizza said he knew that project was effectively over once he realized Nuzzi had crossed what he described as a “journalistic red line.”

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

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

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

He followed that with another post that read simply, “this is me,” alongside a gif of Keanu Reeves’ Neo character from The Matrix dodging bullets.

Before her relationship with Lizza, Nuzzi had been romantically involved with Olbermann for several years. In his newsletter, Lizza wrote that he had helped Nuzzi “untangle” herself from the former MSNBC host, alleging that she “felt stalked” by Olbermann after ending the relationship.

“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 claimed.

Olbermann pushed back on that characterization in another X post, 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.

Olbermann also shared a photo of himself with Kennedy 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,” he wrote. “This might have been the first sign he was losing his mind.”

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

In an excerpt published in Vanity Fair — where she now works as West Coast Editor after being let go from New York — Nuzzi describes how she reacted to the jokes about Kennedy’s brain during his 2024 presidential campaign, after he revealed that he once had a dead worm in it.

“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.”

While Nuzzi has begun to publicly share her version of events, Kennedy has said little about their alleged affair.

A representative for the Health and Human Services head, who has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, previously issued 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 about Nuzzi’s book.