In the ten months since his confirmation as United States Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr has regularly made headlines. Last month, he instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to abandon its official position that vaccines do not cause autism.

An article published this month intricately chronicles the radical transformation of the CDC from “a fun place to work” in early January to a dark, empty shell marked by “a lot of crying”, multiple sackings and high-profile resignations.

One of the latter was the September dismissal of the agency’s director, Dr Susan Monarez, after she refused Kennedy’s order to fire CDC vaccine experts “without cause” – sparking the resignations of the chief medical officer and the vaccine director. In protest, hundreds of staff rallied, holding signs that read “SCIENCE NOT CONSPIRACIES” and “YOU ARE HEROES”.

This article, which spotlights “the agony and absurdity” of working for Kennedy, was published in New York magazine, where Olivia Nuzzi served as Washington correspondent. That is, until she lost her job over her “digital affair” with the politician – an entanglement that began in November 2023, when she profiled him during his presidential campaign.

Review: American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi (Avid Reader Press)

American Canto, Nuzzi’s much-hyped chronicle of the affair, bombed in its first week – selling only 1,165 hardcover copies and drawing scathing reviews. The book’s release, delayed to avoid clashing with the launch of a memoir by Kennedy’s wife, actor Cheryl Hines, has been labelled a debacle of epic proportions by a publishing insider.

Nuzzi, who briefly reinvented herself as West Coast editor at Vanity Fair, lost her latest high-profile job, just days after the book’s release, when Vanity Fair let her contract expire, citing “the best interest of the magazine”. (It didn’t help that Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé and former political reporter Ryan Lizza accused her of having an affair with South Carolina governor and congressman Mark Sanford, another presidential candidate Nuzzi covered.)

In the book, Nuzzi downplays her role as Kennedy’s adviser. But she also recounts various moments where she offered him guidance, from suggesting which tie to wear on camera, to alerting him to the bear in Central Park controversy and suggesting he get ahead of it.

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Michelle Goldberg points out that it is this kind of ugly and audacious behaviour that is the problem – as is not reporting information “that, if true, would have been of great public interest before [Kennedy’s] Senate confirmation hearings to become the secretary of health and human services”.

Nuzzi, by her own account, is remarkably generous to the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist – a man she describes, perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, as a pathological liar – one who “orchestrated a narrative in which........

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