The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

PR Meets Politics: Cheryl Hines Learns the Kennedy Spin

• Molly McPherson • Episode 335

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When your marriage becomes a media strategy, what do you say—and what do you not say?

In this episode, Molly McPherson breaks down Cheryl Hines’ carefully crafted response to rumors surrounding her husband, RFK Jr., and journalist Olivia Nuzzi. Fresh off her appearance on the Katie Miller Podcast, Hines offered a masterclass in polished PR talk, leaning on trust, communication, and a dash of Kennedy-style deflection.

But was it authenticity or choreography?

Molly dissects:

  • The Kennedy family’s long history of narrative control
  • How Hines framed her marriage as a story of trust and composure
  • What her phrasing reveals about modern political spouse PR
  • The difference between personal grace and public messaging
  • Why sometimes the smartest media move is saying less (with confidence)

Tune in for an unfiltered look at how Hollywood charm meets political spin—and what it teaches us about image, loyalty, and the art of public denial.

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Molly McPherson:

Hey there, in this episode of the podcast, let's look at a public marriage under pressure, a friendship that couldn't survive the politics, and a journalist whose messages with her reporting subject detonated her job. Cheryl Hines, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tick DeTaro, Olivia Nuzi. The question is simple. When loyalty becomes the message, where does the credibility go? Cheryl Hines, best known from Curb Your Enthusiasm, starring Larry David, is facing one of the harder PR tests of her life. Here are the players and the stakes. Hines, of course, is married to RFK Jr., who went from long-shot presidential candidate to a Trump-aligned cabinet role as Secretary of Human and Health Services. Journalist Olivia Nutzi admits to what she calls a digital affair with Kennedy. And Heinz's longtime friend and podcast co-host Tig Nataro ends the friendship over values. This isn't about gossip, it's about optics and credibility. Is this accountability or containment? Let's lay out the timeline clearly so we're all working from the same record. I just finished a YouTube live with my community. I said, I'm going in, I'm talking about Cheryl Hines. I want to highlight some of the things that she said during these peak moments in her marriage to RFK Jr. I love these lives because I like getting the feedback from people in the chat. And people always love to give little factoids as well, some things that you've never heard of. Some people are completely wired into RFK, his past, the Kennedy past. Everybody can chime in. And we started even with Cheryl Hines. We, of course, know her from Kirbier Enthusiasm, but I said, I think rather graciously, I called her like a mid-actress. I gave her like maybe B minus on the scale there. A lot of people said she was C, C minus. But I think we all agreed with out Kirby Enthusiasm, not many people would be talking about Cheryl Hines. But because she's married to RFK Jr., she is a name. That's why likely she had a book deal. Her book, Unscripted, recently came out a few months ago. But now she's dealing with something else. So the marriage to Kennedy. So all this drama predates. So Hines marries Kennedy in 2014. Fast forward 2023, Kennedy announces his presidential run. His public positions, especially on vaccines, abortion, move from the background to center stage. This created problems for a good friend of Cheryl Hines, that's comedian Tignitaro. Those two had a podcast together, and a lot of people liked it. And a lot of people in Hollywood liked it. They would break down documentaries together. And there was a lot of laughter in it. You could see that they were just good friends. It was a podcast where you really felt like you were eavesdropping or listening in on two very good friends giving their takes on documentaries. But once Kennedy entered the race, Tignataro, who was gay, who is very vocal about her more progressive views, started to have problems with this relationship. She once described the whole RFK Jr. of it all as minor annoyances, but it became unavoidable on a national platform. According to Tig, Hines encouraged her just to hear Kennedy out. And I think that's probably what did it. That would be the moment if Cheryl Hines were trying to explain to me. But just hear him out. And here's the reason why it would end it right there. And just like Tig Nataro, she said, her words were, I can't, I just didn't trust it. She was on Tom Papa's podcast, and in that section of the interview, she really said, and it sounded sad when she was explaining that was the breakdown of their friendship. When Kennedy endorsed Trump and later accepted his role in the Trump administration, Tig called it, not my world. And that's when the friendship ended. Now, on to the marriage headlines. In September 2024, Olivia Nutzi, then a political correspondent for New York magazine covering Kennedy's campaign, acknowledges that her communications with Kennedy became personal. She denies any physical relationship but confirms intimate messaging. And honestly, ooh, I don't even want to think about what that means. New York magazine, who she was writing the piece for, places her on leave, reviews the work, says the stories themselves are factually accurate, and conclude she violated disclosure and conflict of interest standard. She leaves in magazine the next month. But then the personal fallout continues. Nutzi at the time was engaged to political's Ryan Lizza. He ends the engagement and both later accuse each other of harassment and blackmail in legal filings. It got messy. It got personal. It's all the things that fuel a PR scandal. That same month, Cheryl Hines is photographed at Milan Fashion Week without her wedding ring. I am linking my podcast from last September in the show notes. If you want to listen to that podcast, where I talk about Cheryl Hines appearing at Milan Fashion Week without her wedding ring. And she was waving her hand. She knew exactly that she was being photographed. And if you watch the video of her coming out of the car, she comes out slowly. She takes her time. Her ringless finger on her left hand, very prominent. And those ringless images dominated the feeds and became the visual shorthand for a marriage under stress. After returning, Heinz addresses the moment in interviews because she has her memoir out. And her consistent lines are these. And then after returning, Heinz just let it go away. You almost picture behind the scenes, Bobby said, Listen, I need you to be on the team. When I talked about this in the live, some people in the chat said, maybe she has an agreement, a prenuptial agreement. Maybe there's a clause where she has to make X amount of years in the marriage. Who knows? The timelines are very close for that marriage. RFK Jr., he was married to his first wife, Emily. He was cheating on Emily with his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. And if you read the information, and this is alleged, that there was also crossover in Mary Richardson's marriage to RFK Jr. and Cheryl Hines. Mary Richardson, sadly, is no longer with us. And a lot of that has to do with the pressure of being with RFK Jr. He does not sound like a good person to be married to. And Cheryl Hines was also married to someone else. They have one daughter together. And I remember when all this was going down, and I was thinking, why? Is the Kennedy allure? Is the pull that strong to be a Kennedy? And that's the Kennedy that you want to pick. So now, fast forward October 2025, Nutsi gets a publishing deal. She has a book that's coming out. This means that Heinz has to go out and address it. She appeared on the Katie Miller podcast. It came out yesterday, the day after this recording is released. So I've not heard it yet. But we've seen excerpts from the podcast pulled by politics, like all over the place these days. They're the ones who came out with the leak about the young Republicans that was in last week's episode. But Cheryl Hines has a job to do. Some of the quotes that were pulled from the interview, she is speaking in her consistent lines. Quote, you have to consider the source. It ends with a conversation with Bobby. Cheryl Hines said she felt overwhelmed and embarrassed when the messages became public. And in the past, she said she's felt overwhelmed and embarrassed when messages became public. She's also been quoted as saying that she briefly considered divorce, but then accepted Kennedy's denial that anything physical happened. She frames the outcome as the couple becoming closer. She stated that you have to consider the source. So part of the likely administration push through Cheryl Hines is that they have to denounce the source, which is Nutzi, which is interesting to do. It's not like she's some floozy or bimbo coming out. This isn't some bimbo eruption, a la President Clinton, right? She's now a political contributor to Vanity Fair. She has respect as a journalist. She has credentials. It's tough to go against it. So it'll be interesting to see what comes out in this book. But the Trump administration clearly is doing damage control right now. And to add one more thread, last September, when all this came out, there was additional chatter about Kennedy's past relationships and alleged infidelity over the years. The website media, they talk about the media industry. They published claims from multiple women, three, tied to his orbit, saying they had romantic relationships with RFK Jr. outside the marriage during that year, while he was married to Cheryl Hines. So those are allegations. There are denials on the record. So they're not verified as fact. However, it just adds to the mess. Last piece of context Nutzi moves to Los Angeles, becomes West Coast editor at Vanity Fair, and is now writing this memoir that will include the affair revelation. So the New York magazine exit and the personal fallout. But she recovered. Now that's the setup. Let's pull apart the messaging. We analyze message strategy on three axes: language, timing, and delivery. Then we ask what the goal appears to be. So language first. Heinz relies on these types of phrases. Consider the source. We talk privately. We trust each other. Each one lowers the temperature without adding information. Consider the source, discredits critics. It discredits Nutsie. We talk privately, closes the door to follow-ups. We trust each other, substitutes emotion for evidence. None of that addresses the ethical questions created when a journalist acknowledged intimate communication with her reporting subject. That's a nutsie issue. What Cheryl Hines needs to discuss, her issue is her marriage and can RFK Jr. be trusted. But NUTSI's language matters too. She uses the phrase communications became personal and adds never physical. That's controlled wording. It acknowledges boundary crossing. It does acknowledge boundary crossing, but it minimizes the nature of the relationship. It's classic post-crisis phrasing intended to reduce harm while admitting to a breach of standards. Timing. The ringless Milan photos appear immediately after the digital affair becomes public. Whether deliberate or coincidence, I think it was 100% deliberate. The timing invites speculation and supplies the story's most powerful image. Heinz did not race to respond from a public perception point of view. I think that response was direct to Bobby. It was a threat. She is saying, I will blow you up. This is just a taste of what you're going to get. Nutsi's admission also arrives after the story breaks, not before, which is reactive accountability, not proactive disclosure. And lastly, delivery. Heinz chooses interviews and a memoir. So no notes, app, apology, no live camera, no extemporaneous statements. It's all edited and mediated. She did do an interview on CBS Morning recently, but it was a package. It wasn't live. That minimizes risk. It also minimizes credibility gains. Nutzi's delivery is a formal statement to the press, then a career pivot, and a forthcoming book that allows her to control the narrative as the narrator. So the apparent goal in both cases is the same. Limit narrative damage, polished restraint does that. It does not resolve. However, it does not resolve credibility. Now, media and platform choices, they determine how a story lives in culture. And here's how this one traveled the ringless Milan image becomes that defining visual. When most people think of this tabloid, the tabloids push marital crisis, mainstream coverage reframes it as ethics and accountability story with more emphasis on standards, conflict, and political implications. If Cheryl Hines is not playing by the playbook and she's showing up in Milan where she's telling the press she's going to be there, she slowly exits the car and it is a slow roll planned pap walk. She's sending a message and she's in control. RFK Jr., not in control. Tig Nitaro's interviews provide moral contrast, calm tone, clear boundaries, no personal attacks. She reframes the conversation from scandal to values, why it's what you align with publicly and how it matters. Tig Nitaro isn't in crisis. And it's clear that she doesn't want to hurt Cheryl Hines, but she needs to explain why she separated herself, why she distanced herself from a very good, tight relationship. Nutsi's move to Vanity Fair in the memoir announcement reposition her from a political reporter to a culture narrator. That's a strategic identity shift from subject to author, from scrutiny to self-explanation. She's just one more woman in a long line of Kennedy women. And I think she has the credibility as a reporter and now as a West Coast editor to give herself some of the credibility to distance herself from the scandal. In short, every participant repackages their role. Heinz becomes the loyal spouse under scrutiny. Nozi becomes the flawed journalist, turned first-person narrator, and Ataro becomes the friend who chose values over proximity. I guess the former friend. So the credibility tests, we use one simple model: reaction, accountability, and repair. Reaction. Hein's reaction outside of the Balan photos is composed, contained, disciplined. Accountability is lacking. There's no public-facing specificity. That is by design, no direct engagement with the press, with the core ethical problem raised by the NUTSI admissions. The message is loyalty, not clarity, and repair. That's to be determined. If the strategy is silence and serenity, then the repair depends on the next headline, not the visible steps taken now. So in PR terms, this is successful containment, but also failed credibility. It preserves dignity. It does not rebuild trust in Cheryl Hines or RFK Jr. So here are three takeaways for three audiences. For leaders, handling something privately might work inside a relationship. But if the crisis is public, visible accountability is part of the job. For journalists and creators, boundaries are credibility. Disclosure protects the work and the audience. If you wait until exposure to acknowledge a conflict, you've already lost the trust window. And for everyone listening, when a response feels polished but empty, you're not seeing honesty. You're seeing strategy. Silence is rarely neutral, it's usually tactical. But the broader lesson is simple: spin thrives in ambiguity. The less specific the language, the more control the speaker keeps. Cheryl Hines managed the optics. Tignitaro managed her boundaries, and Olivia Nutzi managed the fallout. Only one of those choices builds lasting credibility. Calm is not proof. Control without clarity is not accountability. And accountability isn't exposure, it's credibility. And truth never goes out of style. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.

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Molly McPherson

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