Tim Miller (2:52)

In some ways. She benefited from being pre Internet, really a little bit of a different animal.

Olivia Nuzzi (2:58)

Well, but it was sort of the first Internet based shaming. Right. When you think about it, probably, I think I wasn't cognizant at the time.

Tim Miller (3:06)

But yeah, that's true. I guess it was Drudge. It's a little different than the minute by minute, the second by second, blow by blow that you're into.

Olivia Nuzzi (3:14)

Yeah.

Tim Miller (3:15)

I want to start saying to you when we decide to do this, I just kind of want to pretend like I just bumped into you at a hotel and ask all the burning questions I have about how this came to pass. Because we haven't talked all that much, a little bit from time to time, texting over the past year. And I think my first question would just be, like, why, like, why did you decide to do this? Right? Like, why did you write this? You could have just, I don't know, I mean, you did kind of disappear for a year. You could have wrote under a nom de plume, could have done anything. You decided to do this. What was the why did you do it?

Olivia Nuzzi (3:54)

Well, I just, I was writing, I'm always writing. Like, I remember when my, when my dad died, I came home and that night I sat there and I wrote his obituary. And like, for me, I think it's just a way of establishing sort of the contours of reality, you know, to get down everything that can be stated for certain and have a better idea that way of what cannot be stated for certain. And so I guess it's just what I'm always doing. And then what I was writing started to take on this kind of shape. And I had a sense of what I thought maybe it was becoming or revealing. And I sent some of it to my editor Jophi at Avid Reader Press, and he just responded, I get it. And that was survive, needed to hear. And I'm not much of a planner, if you can believe it. And there was no, like, sitting down, like, oh, what do I, what do I do? Right? There were a lot of people telling me, oh, just, just keep going, right? Cover the end of the election, take some other assignment, like be shameless, because everyone else involved is shameless and you should be shameless too. But I think shame is really important. And I had fucked up, right? I did something wrong. Like, those ethics rules exist for a reason. They're really good rules. And I had violated that. And it struck me that, like, it's not like you Just wake up one day and you make a big mistake. Right. It had to have been many imperceptible errors that like contributed to really just a malformed perspective that, that led to that type of mistake. And I took it really seriously, you know, and I thought it was like this big important spiritual event in my life that I didn't want to just pretend that it didn't happen. I didn't at first. It's like an intoxicating thought, you know, like, oh, could I just do that? And then immediately it's just, no, of course I can't do that and live it myself. And so I just sort of wrote and thought and tried to like stay out of trouble and didn't stay out of.

Tim Miller (6:20)

I don't know. I don't know if you achieved that part.

Olivia Nuzzi (6:23)

Say. Well, but I did. But that's the thing. It's like I. I don't want to allow someone else's chaos that they're stirring up to be put on me, you know, I, I did. Right. I wrote this book. It's about America. It's about ideas, it's about the last 10 years in America and reality. Distorting what other people are talking about opportunistically in this discourse is not what this book is about. And so that's someone else's trouble.

Tim Miller (6:56)

I mean, there's so much there. I have like 18 follow up questions, so I'll just kind of take them one at a time. I think you're kind of pitching the. There's this look, it's letters to a young poet. It's Rilke, where he says, I write because I must. Like there's that kind of element. I write. That's just because that's what I do. I write.

Olivia Nuzzi (7:13)

Pitching it. Yeah, no, not pitching.

Tim Miller (7:15)

And there's that kind of reasoning for doing this, which makes sense. In the book you write about the editor that you had told you that you should try to write your way out of your problem magazine.

Olivia Nuzzi (7:28)

That was presented to me as sort of a way to keep my job rather than what happened if I wrote some sort of tell all. Yeah, yeah.

Tim Miller (7:36)

But this doesn't really feel like that. Right. And this, like in some ways you tell some stuff about rfk, which we'll get into, and you tell some stuff about your life and you reflect. But it doesn't feel like you were trying to write your way out of trouble.

Olivia Nuzzi (7:50)

No, I mean, in some way I think I wrote myself further into it. Right. Because I revealed things that people didn't even know I did wrong. But that it felt to me like important. If I was going to write a book like this, I wanted people to, I guess, know what they were dealing with or I didn't see any value in trying to like spin it in some way to make me look good. There was no me looking good in that situation. Right. And I think I'm always trying to just talk to the smartest person in the room. Right? Talk to the person reading who is to me smartest means the most open minded, right. The most interested in or capable of holding nuance, the most curious. And I, I knew that there would be like a tabloid cannibalization and a media like navel gazing interpretation and that all of that would probably be, you know, like it typically is. But I was just writing the book that I felt I had a responsibility to write creatively and spiritually and like with my time here, and I took really seriously, I got very upset at a certain point when they sent the books to print. It occurred to me just.

Matt Rogers (9:21)

How.

Olivia Nuzzi (9:24)

Serious it is to kill so many trees to print your book. And I got very upset. And every time I would ask Simon and Schuster about, well, how many trees exactly is that? They would send me this, they would send me this propaganda back about how many trees Simon and Schuster plants every year. And I was like, well, I didn't ask how many planted, I asked how many you killed. But I just, I didn't want to waste anybody's time or waste any trees. And I took that really seriously. And like, I. It's not an effort to like brand myself in any particular way.

Tim Miller (10:03)

You know, I went back and rewatched. You interviewed me after I wrote my book, which was a big kind of reflection on like my failings.

Olivia Nuzzi (10:12)

I love that book.

Tim Miller (10:13)

Thank you. And I rewatched the interview just to kind of see what we talked about, like refresh my memory. And you were kind struck by how bleak I was about the state of affairs. Bleak about politics, about Washington, kind of bleak about myself. And your book wasn't really that bleak, really. I mean, there are bleak parts, but you really try, it feels like, to talk about what you got out of this. And you talk about God and spirituality way more than I remember you talking about it. Maybe you just don't talk about it with me because I'm a heathen, gay, I don't know. But I like, I don't know. I guess my question is, going through this whole terribleness, you've now mentioned spirituality twice in this podcast. Do you feel like you've Found something.

Olivia Nuzzi (11:08)

Yeah, I'm going to rebrand to be a tradwife or something.

Tim Miller (11:11)

I don't know. There's a lot of God. You're capitalizing God in the book.

Olivia Nuzzi (11:15)

He'll catch at cpac. No, I mean, I never had really written anything personal before. You know, the work was always subjective, right? Because that type of work is subjective, but it was rarely personal. Like, occasionally I would write in, like, something would happen, right. My mom happened to die when I was with Jill Biden at a hospital, not the right hospital. And, you know, I worked that into the piece. There's a little bit there. But typically when I always thought that if I was really in a piece, it was a process failure. And I guess this has been the ultimate process failure. And so I'm in the book a lot, right. But I had never really, you know, written about those things. And I guess I. Trying to think of how to explain it. I guess I felt like with the rapturous events of last year and with the big. The big crash out there was an enormous opportunity before me that I shouldn't waste. And that opportunity was about figuring out what I had done wrong and how it had come to be that I had made this mistake and assessing what had gone wrong and taking it seriously. And if I did that, right, and if I, like, made it through this dishonor in an honorable way, if I didn't try to use anyone as a human shield, if I didn't try to say, oh, it wasn't so bad, or it wasn't a big deal, then hopefully I'd be able to proceed better than I was living before. And that had led me to failure. And so I guess that's where that comes from.

Tim Miller (13:04)

How hard did you find it to do that, to insert yourself into this and to write about yourself? I struck, like, look, every. I guess maybe not every single person, but many of us, myself included, loved your, like, political profiles. And there's always this kind of irreverence to them and kind of a wry, dispassionate assessment of the silliness and the veepishness of it all and. Yeah, right. And that's hard to do when you're, like, looking at yourself and assessing your own mistakes and you want to take that seriously. I'm wondering, as you've seen some of the reviews of the book and stuff, like, some people's criticism is. That's kind of hard to bridge, right? That if you're going to look at everybody else kind of like a mocking, irreverent lens and then look at yourself very seriously, like, it's hard to bridge those two. Did you struggle with that?

Olivia Nuzzi (13:53)

I don't think I'm looking at. Well, I think I mock myself rather a lot. Right. I mean, I published a list today, a day of publication of my book about everything that's gone wrong with publication of this book. Right. I. But I don't think that I look at people in the way that you describe.

Tim Miller (14:14)

I mean, maybe mocking was probably unfair, but irreverent. There was a puckishness to it. There's a puckishness to your writing about other people?

Olivia Nuzzi (14:21)

Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I don't know. It kind of sounds like not my business if people feel that way about the book. I wasn't really trying to do anything in this book other than write something honest and be honest about my experiences and. And how it felt and what had happened and how. How I was kind of putting it in context and I didn't see a way around it. Right. Like, it's a necessary context. From my perspective this last year and from the. The perspective and the vantage point from which I was writing this book was on the periphery, pretty far from the story I've been covering geographically and in every other way. And it was that perspective that allowed me to complete this thought that I had begun forming when I first started writing about Donald Trump 10 years earlier. And it was also that perspective that allowed me. I felt like. I don't know if you felt like this, but I felt like I was covering this world and associating with people in this world for a really long time, and I had just ceased to be able to see it clearly in some ways. Like, I just was too. It was too familiar. And I write about that, about how something can become, you know, so familiar that it's foreign. And it really wasn't until I fled and ended up on the wrong side of the country at the end of the election that I felt like I could get a hold of it.

Tim Miller (16:09)

Yeah, I mean, I obviously felt that way, and. I don't know. One way out of it for me was I just decided that the only way to deal with all of the bullshitting and all of the unreality of this kind of world that Donald Trump created was to just be, like, completely myself and just be totally, radically candid about what I think about it and fuck it, like, whatever the world be damned. And it's kind of hard to do that as a journalist. I'm not a journalist. Right. So we had a different challenge And I felt like that was freeing for me. And I wonder, you know, for you as you kind of looked at this process, like, whether, like, you felt like you were able to do that, like, you. Whether you're able to, like, be.

Olivia Nuzzi (16:57)

It sounds like you think I wasn't. Well, it's okay, I guess.

Tim Miller (17:03)

Here's what I'd say. I don't know. If you were. If you weren't, I guess would be my answer to the question. Because I think that, like, the way that the book is written, there are parts of it that are, like, so beautiful and elegant and interesting and they're. And they are. You know, it piques curiosity in various ways. You know, you write it so, like, the politicians don't have names. You know, at times, like, you write about the politician and the MAGA general and stuff. And so there is this element to it that's still a little, like, mysterious. Right. And there are parts where you're like, I mean, just unbelievably vulnerable, like talking about your parents death and talking about rfk. But yet, like, at the end of it, I still kind of felt like. I don't know what she really thinks about all of this that has happened that she's covered for the last 10 years. Maybe she's trying to tell me, and I just can't quite grasp it.

Olivia Nuzzi (17:56)

I think there's that cliche to show and not tell when you write. And I have always tried to abide by that. And I felt here. I mean, I think that my worldview is reflected in all manner of ways that I write about, you know, immigration, the border, or that I write about January 6th. I mean, so much of the book really comes back to January 6th. I don't think it's like a mystery. And I think the details that I include and the kind of that form this portraiture of the characters that you refer to. I think however you feel about it as a reader at the end is correct. You know, I can't tell you how to feel, and I wouldn't. But I can tell you what I experienced and what I saw and what I heard and what it felt like, you know.

Tim Miller (18:58)

Yeah. And I guess that is what I was sort of trying to get back to with the question about Rilke kind of writing. Because you must versus, like, trying to write out of this. Right. Because that was a choice. You could write a book that had these various pastis and that you kind of expressed how you felt about the moments and leave people still a little bit. The mystery that comes with that kind of writing. Or you could have ripped the band aid off and said, no, you've done a real tell all. You could have ripped the band aid off and said, no, this is what really happened. This is what I think about Bobby.

Olivia Nuzzi (19:35)

But I did, I did rip the band aid off emotionally. I didn't think that there was any real value in sharing my opinions about things. Right. But my assessments and my descriptions and the way that I reveal character I do think is valuable. Right. That's the sort of privilege afforded to people who cover this sort of stuff in general. Or the kind of cursed privilege, I suppose, of having been as stupid as I was and getting admired in a situation which my vantage point was different than it should have been. Right. Is that I had. I have a perspective, informed in ways that other people could not possibly be informed. And I have a responsibility to share about that. I thought there was value in that. I didn't think that there was value for anything other than the immediate discourse. Right. The 24 hour discourse in making big judgments. I think that the details I include and the portraits that I paint are the judgment, you know.

Tim Miller (20:45)

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Olivia Nuzzi (23:49)

I write about that in the book about, you know, when he would ask my opinion or ask for advice. My approach was Socratic mostly. Right. And I would just help him talk it out. But. And that anytime I gave prescriptive advice, he never took it. Right. But I didn't really, I didn't view my role as telling him what to do. Like, as unbelievable as it is, I loved him. Right. And I cared about him and I didn't, you know, I didn't think that I just didn't think it was my place to tell him what to do and I wouldn't have wanted to tell him what to do anyhow. But I also, I think I was just operating under this delusion that because he was so on the periphery, right, because what he was doing seemed so irrelevant and he was, his polling was so low and it was getting lower, right. In the time from, from when I had written about him, I think the polling went from like a 1 off 20% poll down to like 3% on average. And so I, it didn't feel like, you know, the one time, for whatever it was, the one time it came up at New York magazine as, you know, someone was working on something and how was I, you know, could I help them? Like, I sent them to the campaign. I also sent them to the dnc, to Liz Smith, right, who was running the, the campaign against him. You know, I gave insight that was not helpful at all and that, you know, on balance, affected it neutrally or negatively. But I, I didn't, it didn't come up really otherwise because nobody really cared that other than when it would, you know, reach the level of meme that he, that he was running. And so I think I was able to kind of keep this diluted perspective that it was like just this private thing that was so irrelevant that it wasn't going to pose any sort of problem. And then lo and behold, it unfurled in this way where it just directly collided with the main event that I was covering.

Tim Miller (26:01)

And I think that's again, where this is long after you profile them. But as you say, you're covering the race, you get to the point, you talk about in the book where he's deciding who to endorse and you're kind of like, you're talking back and forth about this. And I think he says it makes him feel nauseous to endorse Biden, nauseous to endorse Trump.

Olivia Nuzzi (26:18)

And I think when you're, I think when you're in the, you know, it was the sort of revelation of him to me as the person that I would come to think of as the politician, really starts there, where the, when you've been in the wilderness for so long, right, when you have been irrelevant and you have not been invited to any inner circle and you have to fight to be heard or you're kind of, you're disinvited from things or deplatformed or whatever, when you are suddenly invited in, when you're suddenly being cheered for. I Don't. It seemed to me that it activated this part of the personality that just. It didn't matter where the cheering was coming from. It just mattered that it felt good to be cheered. And I. It was kind of. It was astonishing to watch, and it has remained so.

Tim Miller (27:27)

But in some ways, you're, like, wrapped up in that. Right? And there's this. You talk about, like, the reality distortion field, but like, you were writing at some point about how, like, I think you wrote, I was proud of him because I believed he believed the decision was the best means to be of service to others. The decision was going to endorse Trump. And you covered Trump for nine years. Some of you had to know that that was not going to be a way for him to serve others by going to work for Donald Trump.

Olivia Nuzzi (27:56)

I also wrote about how, in helping him talk through the decision, I wrote about how, in my view, all of the perils of endorsing Trump, Right, all the perils of trying to work with Trump, that was all the case, obviously. It was also the case that because he has no beliefs, Trump. Right. And because he has no principles and because he really just orients himself around power, around celebrity, it is a malleable situation, or it's porous, rather. Right. And the best example that I could think of was what Kim Kardashian did with. With criminal justice reform. Right. And so I, in talking it through, you know, that was the sort of like, sure, she stood next to him, right? She risked ridicule and being made a fool of, but she did manage to. To get a nonviolent offender's prison term commuted. She did manage to. To help enact the. The First Step Act. She did manage to at least elevate this conversation at the federal level about something that I think was good. So the idea that there's never an opportunity, I think Trump's lack of any belief system can be, for someone with the correct motivations and who knows what they are doing, can be an opportunity.

Tim Miller (29:20)

But do you think he had the correct motivations in that.

Olivia Nuzzi (29:21)

In that instance? Right, But. But it didn't work out that way. No.

Tim Miller (29:25)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (29:26)

No, absolutely not. In retrospect, at the time, though, at the time, though, like I write, I believed in him and I believed him, and that's not. There's no. It's not a positive thing for. For me to reveal. Right. It's. It's just the truth.

Tim Miller (29:42)

Right. So this is the part I'm trying to process. Yeah. So, like, you keep thinking the love part, and I. I hate to do this, like, a high school thing. But I just. I'm, like, trying to understand it. It's like, did. Did you. Were you. Did you kiss him? I said you kiss him.

Olivia Nuzzi (29:56)

I'm not doing this type of thing. I write about it in the book. And, like, I. I just. I just not.

Tim Miller (30:02)

I'm just trying to understand.

Olivia Nuzzi (30:03)

Look, we all write that type of book, right? I didn't.

Tim Miller (30:07)

I'm not looking for. I don't. I don't want to, like, a list of the. Like, all the. Anything that you did with Bobby. I'm just trying to understand. Like, you say you loved him, but, like, we all. I deal with this. Like, this is not with somebody that was trying to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, But I could. I can think back in the day when I was kissing boys, and I'd, like, think that I was in love with somebody. And then you would go and you'd have a night, and you'd wake up the next morning, and you're like, this was crazy. I thought I was falling in love with this person. This person's insane, actually. Like, I didn't. I didn't know what I was talking about. I was infatuated. It's like. That's what I'm trying to understand. Like, looking back on it, like, do you feel like you really were in love with him or like you just were infatuated and caught up in it? I.

Olivia Nuzzi (30:48)

You know, I think we're. We're both alone a lot, right? We were both on the road a lot. I was avoiding trying to figure out what I was doing in my personal life. I wasn't happy. I was being a coward about it. Right. And, you know, I think he didn't really have anyone who wasn't working for him that he could talk to about what he was dealing with. And I guess it was kind of formed of that mutual isolation. The question that I. It's like, were my feelings real if he was not real?

Tim Miller (31:25)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (31:25)

Right. If I. If I. And, no, I don't think so.

Tim Miller (31:28)

Yeah. And so that's, like, the part that I'm trying to.

Olivia Nuzzi (31:30)

But at the time, I'm writing about the. At the time, right? I'm writing about these things at the time. And so it was important to me. Like, my perspective is different now. Right? And I also. I know things now that I did not know then, and I have. I just have more information now. But it was important to me to be honest about what I was feeling then and what it felt like then and to not Rewrite that based on my present interpretation of it.

Tim Miller (31:55)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (31:55)

When I'm writing about those events at that time during that campaign, I'm just writing about what happened and what it felt like. I'm not rendering a judgment about that.

Tim Miller (32:06)

I don't know either. What I'm trying to get to is I'm trying to tie it into, like, you're also writing about what happened after, right? Like, after he betrays you, after he leaks about you, after he ghosts you. And at that point, like, if you look back on a campaign where at some points you were, like, giving him advice and. And. And running down information for him, like, was it just he was using you?

Olivia Nuzzi (32:31)

Possibly, possibly. But I. But I reveal those things, right? Like, that's. I guess maybe we just have different styles. Like, that's my way of telling you what I think.

Tim Miller (32:44)

Yeah, we certainly have different styles, and that's good because we're supposed to be different. But I'm, like, mad. I'm madder at him than you are. I'm mad at him. I'm like, fuck you, rfk. Fuck the way you treated Olivia. And fuck you, what you're doing right now, honestly. And in the book, you are hard on yourself. You're hard on some other people. There are more things that I think that you could reveal about him. I would assume that you've chosen not to. And if he betrayed you, why not. Why not reveal the truth about him?

Olivia Nuzzi (33:18)

I think I did. I mean, the fact that you had that reaction tells me that I gave you enough information.

Tim Miller (33:26)

But have you given us enough information? That is in the public interest, I guess, is my question. Right. Like, I think so. And the New York Times asked you if you. If he had text you, if you would. If you had released them, like, shouldn't you. Like, shouldn't you just empty the clip? Is what I'm saying. I shouldn't. You give people everything that you have so that we're not left to kind of like. Like, wonder.

Olivia Nuzzi (33:47)

I think people have taken from me quite a lot over this process.

Tim Miller (33:52)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (33:52)

It's like, how much more do I have to violate myself?

Tim Miller (33:57)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (33:58)

And this book is not.

Tim Miller (33:58)

And I'm not.

Olivia Nuzzi (33:59)

No, no, But. But you are. You are actually. Right. And I had to weigh, what can I tell you and what should I tell you? Right. That is in the public interest. That is not about the immediate discourse. What is important for people to understand about this. That is not coming from my fear, from my ego. Right. But that's also responsible. And I. I talked about what I felt like only I could talk about. Right. As it relates to anything else. It's like a complicated question where you get into what's the responsible way to handle information that you might be privy to when your conflict might render it discredited.

Tim Miller (34:52)

Right, sure.

Olivia Nuzzi (34:53)

And it's a complicated question and one, I have a lot to say to you privately.

Tim Miller (34:58)

But he's the Secretary of Health and Human Services. I guess my point is I'm not. This is what I'm not trying to take from you. Like, I don't. I don't care about your love life with any person in the private or otherwise. And if you want to gossip with me over brunch, I'm happy to do that.

Olivia Nuzzi (35:12)

Like, in this case, we can do that somewhere else.

Tim Miller (35:15)

Yeah, sure. Over dinner, over whatever. Happy hour, late night. I'm open. I'm not a big brunch fan anymore either, myself. I just like to fit into stereotypes. But, like, he's. He's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Like, you kind of allude in the book that he's doing drugs. Like, is he doing drugs?

Olivia Nuzzi (35:32)

I mean, I tell you what, I felt like I could tell you responsibly in the book about that, right. I talk about him telling me that he is doing some drugs. You know, I didn't administer any drugs, so I can only. I can only tell you so much. But I tell you what, I, you know what I think you should know about that. Like, that's the information that I had about that, right. Him telling me that this person who says that he's sober, Right. And he was telling me privately that in fact he was not sober and he was hiding it, not just from the public, but from his own wife, among other things. And I write that in the book because I think it was in the public interest to do so.

Tim Miller (36:21)

Right, right. You mentioned tmt, but, like, is he doing other drugs? He doing ketamine? Is he doing.

Olivia Nuzzi (36:26)

I mean, I think I write in the book that I had asked him about another drug I heard that he was doing, and he had, you know, emphatically denied it. But I can't say that I make much of his emphatic denial of anything.

Tim Miller (36:41)

Sure. You also say at a time like, you're afraid of him. Were you, like, actually afraid, like, feeling a threat?

Olivia Nuzzi (36:48)

What are you referring to?

Tim Miller (36:50)

Well, there were. You were told that his bodyguard, you know, was a dangerous person and that there were, you know, like, threats and, like, he was. He had a temper. And, you know, like, when. During the key period where after he'd endorse Trump where this all comes out. Obviously he's threatening, menacing you. He doesn't want you to come public with information like that's, that's pretty alarming for somebody that's the secretary again of Health and Human Services.

Olivia Nuzzi (37:19)

I mean, I wrote about my experience as honestly as possible in a way that I thought served the public interest and just would be of use maybe. Right. But it's not for this immediate discourse. And I think that there's like a lot of, there's this enormous appetite for this tell.

Tim Miller (37:39)

All.

Olivia Nuzzi (37:39)

Right. And for something that would, would be satisfying, I guess, to people who, who want to watch others get torn to shreds. But I just, I didn't have any interest in, I didn't think that was going to be worth anyone's time. And I never would have, I would just never do something like that. Right. Like I wrote something that is about. All of this is relevant insofar as it's the necessary context for a reader. Right. About who they're dealing with here as their narrator. Right. I have the responsibility to be honest about that. And it's also factors in to my broader understanding of this 10 year period of Trump's rise to dominance. Right. Where reality just seems to be distorting, kind of sprawling out from the center around Trump. And my job was to talk to monstrous people, including Donald Trump.

Tim Miller (38:35)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (38:35)

And to, to make sense of them and translate for, for people who would never or could never do that. And a lot got blurred. And so that experience with him that we're talking about, I think is just an important, it's important context and it was an important event in my life and it was important for me to be honest about it in this book. And it factored into this broader story about the distortion of reality.

Tim Miller (39:08)

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Olivia Nuzzi (41:54)

Well, but I shared everything that I felt I responsibly could share, right? And I also, in this book, right in this context, I told the most honest story that I could possibly tell. And I don't think it's hard to have this conversation in public. It's like. Because it's just.

Tim Miller (42:23)

Yeah.

Olivia Nuzzi (42:25)

Trying to think of how to phrase this. For instance.

Matt Rogers (42:30)

The.

Olivia Nuzzi (42:30)

The person I write about is the man I did not marry. Right.

Tim Miller (42:35)

He can, can we just say who it is for people join me just to say it, or should we just leave it like that?

Olivia Nuzzi (42:42)

It's your show.

Tim Miller (42:44)

I think we're talking about Ryan. She's referring. For folks who are trying to follow the character. She's referring to Ryan Lizza, who is. Who's written about this.

Olivia Nuzzi (42:51)

But he, he has presented his harassment of me, right, in this humiliation campaign as some sort of crusade that's in the public interest. Right. That somehow the country will be saved by him writing some combination of, like fan fiction and revenge porn. Right. And he alluded to or claimed that he was in possession of some explosive information somehow from me, unclear. That related to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Sick.

Tim Miller (43:29)

Right.

Olivia Nuzzi (43:29)

And I was just thinking, let's say if that were true. It's not true, by the way. But if that were true, the only responsible way for him to handle that information as a journalist, he would know this would be to quietly pass it off to an organization that does not have his conflict. Right. Because his conflicts make it so that that information could be readily dismissed. Right. Or that it is tainted by the context that that information would appear in, which would be this campaign of vengeance, Right. This, this kind of suicide bombers manifesto that he's been publishing that to me tells you all you need to know about whether or not there is serious information in the public interest that he is in possession of. That's going to be expl. Because it would not be. It would not be responsible to reveal it that way. Right. And so I think it's just, it's tough to talk about because you've got to make different calculations about different types of information. I shared in this book what I thought was mine to share, what related to my experience, what I felt that I could state for certain, and what I felt related to this broader story about the distortion of reality amid Trump's rise and the distortion of my reality. Right. And I think it's worth people's time, you know, if people want to talk about their ideas about the book or what their, what their ideas about the author or their ideas about what the book should have been instead, that's up to anyone who wants to do that. I. Whatever. You know, I'm not going to tell anyone how to think or feel about anything, but that's not, you know, my hope is that the. The actual book that I wrote will be assessed on its merits.

Tim Miller (45:32)

Yeah. I just, for the record, found what he did by trying to tease for subscriptions the notion that you had some secret information about a conspiracy related to the Butler shooting in order to get Blue Anon people to sign up to be really, really gross.

Olivia Nuzzi (45:48)

Among other grotesque things.

Tim Miller (45:50)

Yeah, there have been others, but, yeah, that one in particular got my goat. The point, though, that you make, though, is why doesn't he hand over information to a neutral reporter? I think that that would be a fair question people would ask of you, particularly not less now about the book, but during that period between when he RFK endorsed Trump and the election, like, in theory, there could have been time. You could have.

Olivia Nuzzi (46:17)

Well, you have no idea what I did or didn't do, first of all, but why don't you tell us? But in that period, that period that was at the end of August of 2024, by the next month is sort of. I mean, I write about it in the book, but the next month is sort of spent with my world cracking up, right? And. And then with this scandal breaking out in public and then with me fearing for my life, my privacy and fleeing and, and, you know, then ending up out here and spending this year trying to lay low and think and write.

Tim Miller (47:11)

I hear you, Olivia. And I just, like, this is just with love, but, like, the guy ends up getting nominated to be HHS secretary. You've seen up hand how he lies and manipulates people. You've seen it firsthand. You have evidence he's getting nominated and you write in the book that you were praying that God would use him as a force for good. It's like by that point, it was pretty obvious that God was not going to use him as a force for good, was it not? You still pray, but there was no indication. It wasn't like I was praying that he was going to use him for force, for good. Parentheses. But I knew he was not because he's a lying son of a bitch who is like, perpetrating a fraud on the public. Like, that wasn't in there. That part wasn't in there. So, like, do you see it clear? But, like, you could have done something to try to.

Olivia Nuzzi (48:02)

Maybe we pray differently.

Tim Miller (48:03)

But. But could you have tried? Could you have prayed for good, but also tried to stop it? You could have tried to stop it.

Olivia Nuzzi (48:12)

What do you. What are you asking me exactly?

Tim Miller (48:15)

He was trashing you. He's being nominated to be HHS secretary. His reign, I Think, as you said in the newsletter today, you agree with. Has not been good. Like, you had information that you could have shared. I, like, look, Matt Gaetz got. Got denied. Like, they're. Like, it's possible RFK wasn't even a Republican. It's possible that these senators could have not, you know, confirmed him and you didn't share anything about. About him. Why, like, why did you still love him? Or, like, was it just.

Olivia Nuzzi (48:45)

You're making. You're just. I don't know how to responsibly handle this on camera with you here. You're just.

Tim Miller (48:52)

Just.

Olivia Nuzzi (48:53)

I'm writing in that scene that you're talking about, about how I felt privately.

Tim Miller (48:59)

Yeah.

Olivia Nuzzi (48:59)

About my private reaction. How I felt privately. Right. So.

Tim Miller (49:04)

But you had acted public. You'd acted to help him. Like, you admit in the book, you'd acted to help him over the course of the campaign. And so, like, once you realized that he was screwing you over, you didn't. You didn't take any counteraction. You just let him. Right. Walk over you.

Olivia Nuzzi (49:23)

You're reading about it now. I lost my job.

Tim Miller (49:28)

But now he's been. Now he's in there and he's doing a lot of bad stuff. Like, don't you look at that and think. Like, do you look at that, I guess when you're saying that you have the distance now that have clarity? Like, do you see. Do you see clearly what he's doing now?

Olivia Nuzzi (49:40)

Yeah, I agree with you. It's. What was your phrasing? It hasn't been good. I agree with that. I. I think that's the correct assessment, but I. I don't really know how to. What to do with the question that you're asking me because it's making a lot of assumptions.

Tim Miller (50:00)

And.

Olivia Nuzzi (50:01)

And I. I just.

Tim Miller (50:02)

Well, it's not.

Olivia Nuzzi (50:02)

It's just.

Tim Miller (50:03)

It's not making assumptions. It's just like you said, you helped him. Right. During the campaign.

Olivia Nuzzi (50:08)

Am I right about it? I write about. Yeah. What I did wrong. Yeah.

Tim Miller (50:13)

And so, like, once you've done that, like, you didn't, you know, there, like, you. You cease to be. Have to have become like, a journalistic actor.

Olivia Nuzzi (50:21)

I lost my job. I was fired, and I was in hiding, and I was afraid. I was. I was terrified.

Tim Miller (50:30)

Right. Yeah. Of what?

Olivia Nuzzi (50:33)

I mean, I write in the book about, you know, I was terrified of the man I did not marry, and I was very worried about people knowing where I was. And. Can we pause this?

Tim Miller (50:53)

Yeah, we can pause it.

Olivia Nuzzi (50:56)

Sorry.

Tim Miller (50:58)

Hey, y'. All, at this point in the conversation. We took a beat, gathered ourselves and got back together for the rest of the convo. So please stick around for Olivia Nuzzi on her new book, American Canto.

Ed Helms (51:12)

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Olivia Nuzzi (53:35)

I mean, a lot of my whole, you know, the last year was just. My whole life was destabilized. Right? And it also just. There was. I was not in motion for the first time, really, since I was, like, 18, right. Because I'd been working my whole life, and I'd been. One of the things about being a political reporter that's so great is that you don't have to justify. The stakes are always apparent. Right. Like, you never have to think. Like, is what I'm doing important? Like, am I. Am I. You know, do I have purpose? Right. It's. It's inherent to the task, and that's an enormous burden lifted, I think. And then all of a sudden, I'm. I'm still. And I'm dealing also just with, like, a lot of things and people I thought that I knew who were. It turned out, not who I thought that they were. And I could not predict behavior successfully, and I. I was just scared.

Tim Miller (54:53)

Yeah, I hear you, and I don't. I'm trying. I'm sorry. Because of those stakes is why. No, no, no, it's because. It's because of the stakes, what you're talking about. That I'm like, yeah, I'm. I'm sticking with this. That's why I.

Olivia Nuzzi (55:05)

You can ask, whatever.

Tim Miller (55:06)

Anyway, and so I just. Like you said, you left. You're in hiding. You're scared. I. Again, he's a man of import, of huge responsibility right now. Like, if there's another public health crisis, he's in charge. I'm just trying to, like, just ask directly. Like, were you scared of him? Like, were you scared of Bobby?

Olivia Nuzzi (55:25)

I mean, it's dangerous for a woman to keep any kind of diary, generally speaking. I think history has shown that. But, you know, Kennedy history has shown that also. I. I was just scared in general, and I felt like. I felt very vulnerable in general. And, you know, it was very clear to me by. By the time I made it out here that no one was gonna protect me. Right. That it seemed as though no one really had any boundaries as it related to utilizing me or brutalizing me for their own benefit. And it seems recent events suggest that that's still the case. And so I was. I was scared in. In general, and I. It was a strange time, you know, But I also think I take over. You know, it's your criticism that I. That I don't come out, you know, guns blazing in this book is fair and, you know, that's totally legitimate, that that's your reaction. But writing about this at all is an enormous risk that I've assumed.

Tim Miller (56:52)

Yeah.

Olivia Nuzzi (56:54)

And, you know, I realized that there. There's a certain faction or many factions of people who are just never going to be happy with anything. That I do, right? And that's fine. And. But I. I could have just not said anything, right? I could have not told you about my experience here.

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Tim Miller (59:43)

There was a Goodfellas element in the book at points where you feel like did you ever watch the movie Goodfellas? You did? You're a Italian?

Olivia Nuzzi (59:49)

Yeah. I thought you meant I referenced it.

Tim Miller (59:52)

Oh no, no. The helicopter are following him, he thinks. And then the helicopter ends up following him. There's throughout the book, you're like, you think the drones are following you was a Drone following you, that was another thing that never satisfied me. Hope not.

Olivia Nuzzi (60:05)

Hope not.

Tim Miller (60:07)

Did you have a Ray Liotta feel to yourself at times. Who did you think was manning the drone?

Olivia Nuzzi (60:16)

De Niro? No. Well, I often feel like Ray Lyoda in the second half of Goodfellas, and I do root for bad guys in movies.

Tim Miller (60:26)

Okay. A couple other. Just silly things that are just, you know, that I can't. I have to get off my chest before I lose you.

Rocket Money Advisor (60:32)

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Olivia Nuzzi (60:32)

Have you ever read the Nick Pelagi book that Goodfellas is based on?

Tim Miller (60:36)

I should.

Olivia Nuzzi (60:36)

It's really good. You should read it. I mean, it adheres. The script to Goodfellas, adheres so strictly to the book that it's astonishing. It's called Wise Guys. It's really good.

Tim Miller (60:45)

I should. I never go backwards. Kind of like if I've seen a movie, I don't do the book, which is stupid, but that's just.

Olivia Nuzzi (60:50)

No, I don't. I typically don't either, but I love Nick Pelagi.

Tim Miller (60:57)

You said you wrote this walking through the hills there in Malibu on your phone, and I just have to. You're not pulling some of these. You're doing history facts, you're doing science facts. There's microplastics, there's old quotes.

Olivia Nuzzi (61:12)

I write everything on my phone.

Tim Miller (61:13)

Yeah, so you're googling it while you're writing. Are you doing this from memory? How are you handling that?

Olivia Nuzzi (61:19)

Well, how do I do it? I'm trying to think. How do I do it?

Tim Miller (61:22)

Like, if you start. You start to reference Plato.

Olivia Nuzzi (61:25)

Well, it depends.

Tim Miller (61:26)

Is that all from memory?

Olivia Nuzzi (61:27)

I don't think I referenced two phones.

Tim Miller (61:31)

I've got it right here. I'll start looking for the weirdest reference while you message.

Olivia Nuzzi (61:35)

No, but I mean, if I have to come back home and go to a book or go to, like, my dictionary of etymology or something that I'm not gonna. I'll just TK it in the moment. Or I just write. A lot of times I write, but. But, Tim, a lot of times I write, like, half sentences while I'm. You know. And then I. Or just half form thoughts and then I go back to it later. Or I. It's important to me to not let ideas flutter away. And so that process of pacing and. And writing or hiking and writing is very good for that, I find. You know. But I know I go back and I, you know, fact check it or edit it later. But also on a phone, the Dante.

Tim Miller (62:17)

You had Dante. Obviously, the canto is a reference to Dante. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about Dante.

Olivia Nuzzi (62:26)

I just was reading it also. I arrived out here, and it's like I go from the fire of my own life, and then I arrive out here, and the world is literally on fire here. Right. And it was hard not to grow pretty attached because of that. I mean, I like broken things. That's no surprise.

Tim Miller (62:55)

And Dante, as I recall, it's been a minute. I think it was probably 1998. It made me want to reread it again, but I think that you go down into hell and then there's redemption on the other side. Do you feel like you. Are we paralleling Dante or just inspired by him?

Olivia Nuzzi (63:12)

I. I wasn't trying to parachute. You know, write structurally in the same way. I just, I. I couldn't help but, you know, relate to the story of, you know, walking into hell. And there's a. There's a very funny illustration in one of the. One of the translations that I have that's like a. A chart of hell. And it's like there's an arrow by, like, the gate to hell, that there's a vestibule. And it just says, like opportunists.

Tim Miller (63:45)

Who do you imagine is in that. Is in that vestibule? Everybody that we dealt with over the last 10 years.

Olivia Nuzzi (63:52)

It's crowded at the gate.

Tim Miller (63:54)

Yeah. The repetition in the book is there. Is it. Are we incanting. Is it incantation, the repetition, or is that your.

Olivia Nuzzi (64:02)

Is that just your internal monologue, the etymology of incantation? I don't know, but I'm going to look it up when we finish here and I can step into the next room. But. But no, I mean, canto, it's a division of poetry. And I. You know, it's an elliptical structure, the book. Right. There are no chapters or no index. I didn't do acknowledgments because I felt like it would. The kindest thing I could do to anyone who I should thank would be to not put them in this book by name.

Tim Miller (64:37)

It's not that bad. People would have appreciated this, but I hear you.

Olivia Nuzzi (64:42)

I'm sending notes privately. I just, you know, I felt like I didn't need to contribute to anyone's harassment, you know, but the elliptical structure, the sort of the, you know, the idea. This idea that I returned to a few times of the snake eating its tail. Right. And this feeling of the last 10 years being circular. Right. And being at the trial with Donald Trump and thinking back to being at the White House or being further uptown at the start of his Campaign. It all felt. I was trying to render an experience for the reader that would feel something of what it felt like to live through all that and to watch it.

Tim Miller (65:29)

Which is a disoriented feeling. We live through that to that point. I think your best line. That's rude to say. Best line. One of my favorites was when you talk about how Donald Trump fits in Las Vegas and he fits in all these places, but in the Oval Office, when you'd sit with him, the set of the White House seemed in doubt. And then later you talk about how you interviewed Trump after the Butler assassination and how he said to you it didn't feel at all surreal. And speaking for myself, the Butler assassination and you describing him in the Oval Office, it all makes me feel like we're in a simulation and that this isn't real at all. And I just wonder if you have a reflection on that. Having done Navigating the Unreality through throughout the book and throughout your last decade.

Olivia Nuzzi (66:21)

I think it's obvious I've been doing a good job. Right.

Tim Miller (66:25)

Navigating it. No. Feels like engulfed you.

Olivia Nuzzi (66:32)

But I'm happy to be here.

Tim Miller (66:34)

Yeah. Alive. It ends with a raven.

Olivia Nuzzi (66:39)

The book ends with the hawk. Red tailed hawk.

Tim Miller (66:43)

The hawk. Oh, shit. That was a total flub on my part. The worst bird for me to pick. For me to get that wrong. It ends with the hawk. Yeah. And you weren't sure if the hawk and the hawk is cutting through the sky, and you weren't sure if it was a reassurance or a warning.

Olivia Nuzzi (67:01)

What ends with a drone? Do you want to.

Tim Miller (67:06)

Should I pull it up? I mean, I read it. I finished it a second time last night at 1:00am you know, here it is. It's a reminder. There's a hawk. There's a hawk and a drone. There's a hawk and a drone. Okay. There's a hawk and a drone. And the question is whether they're offering you reassurance or whether it's a threat. And I'm wondering if you feel now, after having finished it and having gone through this rollout, whether you feel like maybe it was a threat.

Olivia Nuzzi (67:36)

I feel more reassured than ever.

Tim Miller (67:38)

Really?

Olivia Nuzzi (67:39)

Yeah. I mean, I'm. I'm an optimist, but I. I also just. Thoughtful people are quiet. They're not. You know, I just, I don't. I find it quite easy to not take personally, the digital stoning and. And often I find value in it. Sometimes I. Sometimes people are very funny or have something, you know, useful to say by way of criticism. But it has still been a shock and disturbing to see people engage with this harassment. Right. And to not call it that, to not observe it for what it is, just because I am perceived.

Matt Rogers (68:32)

In.

Olivia Nuzzi (68:34)

A lot of ways, because of that harassment campaign as having this sort of politics that the people who might support and defend women don't want to defend. Right. That's what it feels like. And I think it's.

Tim Miller (68:55)

I agree with that.

Olivia Nuzzi (68:56)

Yeah, that's bullshit.

Tim Miller (68:57)

People that came at you and they're like, oh, this is some political thing because of the Biden article. It's like the Biden article could have been written, anybody with eyes, just not as well as. Not as well crafted as you did Valor.

Olivia Nuzzi (69:08)

Right. Like Alex Thompson, Annie lynch, the Wall Street Journal, Axios. They did real reporting for which there was nothing but social penalty. Right. At a time when it was very difficult. And those reporters deserve credit for that. But I wrote about President Biden came after the first. The debate, right. Like, yeah, there was no great revelation. It was about the fact that there had been this. This conspiracy of silence.

Tim Miller (69:40)

All right, I'm going to end with something nice. I don't know if you'll find it nice. I hope so. The men that you've been talking about, they're doing the harassment campaign. And the politician, the secretary. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get to it. It's coming. The politician, the fucking secretary. That I have nothing but contempt for. All these. All of them. Everybody in these books pale in this book rather pales in comparison to your dad, who is in the book. And I just. I wish that he was still here so that I could have met him and talked to him and. So you would have had him do this process, because I think you do. You write about him so beautifully. And anyway, I know my mother lost her parents when she was young, like you, and it was just so tough for her. And they were also great, and her dad was great. And it was. It really kind of. It reminded me of that, how tough that was for her, but how also how she kind of held him with her, you know, in ways that strengthened her. And I hope that you had that.

Olivia Nuzzi (70:43)

Thank you. No, I mean, I write in the book that I. It was the first time I was happy that he wasn't here, was during all that, since, like. Well, at least. At least I don't have to. He doesn't have to see this. You know, probably wrong, though, but. But, yeah, I don't know. I'd rather have had him for a short time than someone else for a long time, you know.

Tim Miller (71:03)

All right. I appreciate you, girl. Hang in there. Tell Monica hi for me, all right?

Olivia Nuzzi (71:10)

I'm add to my my list of signs that your book rollout has gone awry. Tim Miller says, I appreciate you, girl. Hang in there.

Tim Miller (71:20)

We're just gonna leave it there. That was a podcast. You didn't tell me to off. I told you a good podcaster if you told me to off.

Olivia Nuzzi (71:28)

So I can't say that to you.

Tim Miller (71:30)

All right?

Olivia Nuzzi (71:30)

Every word casts a spell, Tim. Words are powerful.

Tim Miller (71:34)

That is true. We'll leave it with that. It's American Kanto. Go get it. Go get it. It's American Kanto. Don't listen to the haters. Everybody else. We'll see you later today with another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Oh, no. Tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow. I'm lost. It's been a week. We'll see you tomorrow with another edition of the Bulwark Podcast. Peace. I want to know you tell me how it feel Disappeared I can't smoke here. I feel. I'm feeling for a pipe to go down.

Olivia Nuzzi (72:59)

It.

Tim Miller (73:03)

I want to know you tell me how it feels Someone's here Someone knows I'm here.

Olivia Nuzzi (73:22)

Feeling.

Tim Miller (73:25)

Glory. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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