Olivia Nuzzi Claims RFK Jr. Tried to Ease Her Brain Worm Concerns: ‘I Hated the Idea of an Intruder Therein’

Olivia Nuzzi reveals in her upcoming book American Canto that she feared for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the public mocked him after he disclosed that a dead worm had once been found in his brain.

Nuzzi, 32, writes that she and Kennedy, 71, developed what she describes as a “personal relationship” while she interviewed him for a profile later published in New York magazine. Her book refers to Kennedy only as “the Politician” while detailing what has been described as a sexting scandal.

In an excerpt published by Vanity Fair, where Nuzzi now works as West Coast Editor, she reflects on waking up the morning after Election Day and describes her life at that time as “on fire.” She recalls Kennedy telling her he would “take a bullet” for her, and she shares her fears for his safety.

“I did not like to think about it. About the armed man at his speech,” she writes. “Or the armed man who broke into his home. Or the armed men he paid to guard him from armed men who sought to harm him while the federal government denied his pleas for protection from the security agency whose modern protocols were carved by the same bullets that cut boughs from his family tree and cut the track of the American experiment.”

She adds, “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.”

Nuzzi writes that she “loved his brain,” and hated the idea of any sort of intruder inside it. “Others thought he was a madman,” she says. “He was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad.”

The worm story quickly became late-night comedy material and internet memes following a New York Times report quoting a 2012 deposition in which Kennedy said a doctor had discovered a dead parasite in his brain after he experienced memory issues.

Kennedy — then a presidential candidate — reacted to the jokes by posting on X: “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate. I feel confident in the result even with a six-worm handicap.”

Kennedy also discussed it privately with Nuzzi, she claims. In the book, she writes that he reassured her: “‘Baby, don’t worry. It’s not a worm.’” According to her, he said a trusted doctor reviewed scans and believed it likely wasn’t a parasite at all — though the meme had taken on a life of its own by then.

While Nuzzi continues to share her version of events, Kennedy has said little publicly about the alleged affair. A representative for the Health and Human Services secretary — who has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014 — previously issued a statement saying 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 new request for comment regarding Nuzzi’s book.

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