Politico’s former top reporter Ryan Lizza, whose ex-fiancée Olivia Nuzzi was embroiled in a sexting scandal with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., abruptly announced his exit from the online outlet — wildly trashing its weak coverage while asking for money for his new venture.
In his first post for his new “Telos News” Substack, Lizza said he had “recently left” the publication because he believed “their style of political coverage is not meeting the unprecedented moment of democratic peril we are facing.”
“This publication is my earnest attempt to cover the crisis in Washington with a clear-eyed understanding of what is actually happening,” wrote Lizza, who had been Politico’s chief Washington correspondent since 2019.
He noted the new venture would be funded solely by readers — as he called on them to pay for subscriptions to help boost it up.
“I have never written a fundraising appeal, and just typing this paragraph is deeply cringe-inducing for me. But we want to create not just a news outlet, but a news community,” he said.
“And that means I need your help. Specifically, please pay for a subscription to show that you believe in this project.”
Elsewhere in his first post, Lizza accused his former employer and other outlets of apparently kowtowing to President Trump after the commander-in-chief started publicly ripping his critics and threatening legal action.
“I saw up close how easy it was for a media conglomerate to grovel before the Trump administration when the wrong people are in charge,” he wrote.
Lizza ripped the outlet for opting to send one of its reporters to be an onstage guest at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after Trump “attacked Politico for selling subscriptions to the federal government.”
He described the conference as a “sewer of media bashing and cheerleading for the degradation of our democracy where some activists were publicly organizing an unconstitutional third term for Trump — in other words, a coup.”
“A friend of mine who served in Iraq once tried to explain to me how psychologically disorienting warfare can be for soldiers the first time they’re in full-scale combat. It’s so horrific, so unlike any human experience, that the initial instinct is to deny that what’s happening is actually happening,” Lizza said.
“That’s the psychology that has seized many newsrooms, law firms, and other elite institutions in Washington for months. We need to wake up.”
Lizza’s evisceration of his now-former employer came after he was placed on leave late last year after his ex, who was then a New York Magazine political reporter, accused him of physical and sexual abuse in a messy court battle.
Politico, at the time, denied that the shakeup was connected to the Nuzzi-Kennedy saga.
That controversy had spilled into public view when Nuzzi was reported to have engaged in a months-long, personal relationship with Kennedy while she was covering his independent presidential campaign.
The headline-grabbing dispute between Lizza and Nuzzi ended in November when she opted to drop her case.
Lizza returned to Politico in the aftermath but said he would no longer be editing its high-profile newsletter.
“I’ll remain Politico’s Chief Washington Correspondent but with a focus on in-depth features, profiles, and interview,” he wrote on X at the time.
The reporter, however, never published anything under his name after returning.
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