Former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann on Tuesday detailed his “surprisingly ordinary” relationship with New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi a decade ago and also offered his opinion on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nude scandal.
“We had a dog, we got tattoos, we got rings, and like any relationship, it started out great. Then stuff happened, we worked through it, and then it ended,” Olbermann said of their three-and-a-half-year relationship. on Tuesday's “Countdown” podcast..
The journalist was 21 when he began dating Nuzzi but has not spoken to her since they split nearly 10 years ago.
He claimed during an episode of the iHeart Radio podcast that he is not the “Nuzzi Nudes News Network.”Countdown with Keith Olbermann However, she addressed the scandal and spoke at length about their relationship, noting that her parents were “understandably” shocked at first by the 34-year age difference.
“In reality, almost all of the relationships were remarkably ordinary,” Olbermann said.
He spent every Christmas with her parents and would often have coffee with her father. Nuzzi even had a closet in his house. The two also had a dog together named Stevie. Olbermann credits Nuzzi with awakening his lifelong love of dogs.
“Over the course of those three-and-a-half years, she did some strange things, and I guess I did too,” he admitted.
But he said Nuzzi, 31, ” [RFK] According to a friend of the losing presidential candidate, “there is an increase in pornographic photos and videos.”
“There is nothing I know about her then or now to suggest that Olivia continued to send nude photos to men unless they wanted them to,” Olbermann said.
“For whatever it's worth, I cannot and will not defend her journalistic choices here, but in the meta sense of who's right and who's wrong here, she's not the one in the wrong here,” he added.
Nuzzi was placed on administrative leave from her job as White House correspondent for New York magazine after her sexting relationship with Kennedy, 70, came to light last week.
The popular political reporter denied that he was the perpetrator in the situation but acknowledged the inappropriate digital communications that began after New York published a feature article he wrote about the then-White House candidate in November.
“She was sometimes so far off the mark about the consequences of her actions that no one around her said anything, and how could you not know that?” Olbermann said of his ex-wife and her questionable choices as a journalist, pointing to the time she visited the former Trump campaign chairman's home uninvited and later spoke about it to the Columbia Journalism Review.
Journalistic choices aside, the podcast host said of Nuzzi, “I'm always here to support him if he needs it.”
But Olbermann didn't miss an opportunity to make a joke about his ex-wife's plight.
“I don't want to make any bold statements here, but I'm beginning to suspect that she likes older men, meaning she was planning on marrying a man 20 years older than her,” he said, referring to her ex-fiancé, Politico reporter Ryan Lizza.
Nuzzi and Lisa, 50, were engaged at the time of her alleged affair with married RFK Jr. but have since split up.
“Plus, I'm old, but not as old as Bobby Kennedy. I win!” Olbermann continued, laughing heartily.
“This bastard is five years older than me. That clears my conscience a lot.”
