Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s actress wife, Cheryl Hines, has explained why it was so easy to stand by her man during his sexting scandal with then-New York Magazine star writer Olivia Nuzzi.
“I think you always have to consider the source, right? So that’s where I start,” Hines told “The Katie Miller Podcast” in a cutting putdown of Nuzzi, who lost her job and her fiance over the scandal.
“And then it ends with a conversation with Bobby,” she said of her husband of 11 years, according to a sneak peek of the chat obtained by the Politico Playbook.
The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress said last year’s scandal — which Nuzzi always admitted was digital, never physical — was part of the noise she expected as her husband ran for the White House.
“Bobby had been running for president and it was a — an exhausting year-and-a-half of headlines and rumors and articles and chaos,” the actress recalled.
“And at that time, I thought ‘OK, this is more chaos and more rumors.’ And, um, it was a lot,” Hines said.
She also questioned Nuzzi’s motives in dredging it all up again for a memoir expected by the end of the year.
“I don’t know this person. Don’t know their intentions,” Hines said of the writer, who is now at Vanity Fair.
“I could guess, but I won’t. But you can if you want.”
Earlier this week, an insider told the Post that the rumored affair left Hines in “a state of shock and distress” — but that she “eventually and emphatically believed, without reservation, Bobby’s denial.”
Kennedy has also downplayed the relationship, and said through his spokesperson that he only met Nuzzi once for an interview at her request, which spawned a “hit piece” about him.
Hines, meanwhile, has been promoting her own memoir, “Unscripted,” which is out November 11.
