Cheryl Hines may have been all smiles and expressions of MAGA solidarity as she watched her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr. join Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month for his swearing-in as the new secretary of Health and Human Services.
But the Hollywood celebrity has reportedly been dealing with the fear that her notoriously womanizing husband, a scion of the Kennedy family, will succumb to his self-proclaimed “lust demons,” if he’s allowed to live on his own, even part-time, in Washington D.C., according to an RFK Jr. biographer.
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Writing in the Daily Mail, author Jerry Oppenheimer said Hines has given Kennedy an ultimatum, telling him that she would only stay married to him if he relocated her to Washington as well. “Well-connected sources” have told the Daily Mail that the 59-year-old “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star is “absolutely still recovering from the emotional shock and pain” she suffered in September when Kennedy, 71, became embroiled in a bizarre cheating scandal involving a female political journalist half his age.
Kennedy’s reported sexting affair with Olivia Nuzzi “blindsided” Hines and ignited speculation that she would divorce her husband of 10 years, Oppenheimer earlier reported. While Hines and Kennedy seemingly made up as he began campaigning for Trump to win the Nov. 5 election, she still doesn’t trust her husband.
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 13: U.S. President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kennedy’s wife Cheryl Hines, his family and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch pose after Kennedy was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Oval Office at the White House on February 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“Cheryl doesn’t feel Bobby can be trusted one iota living on his own, in D.C., even part-time, with so many attractive women and Kennedy groupies around, as he gets settled in his powerful new position,” an insider said, according to Oppenheimer. “So she’s given him a strict ultimatum: move me or else.”
Hines has not commented on the report. According to Oppenheimer, she regards it as “a great sacrifice” to give up her glamorous Hollywood lifestyle and to move to Washington to become “a political wife.” Hines also reportedly thinks Washington is “stodgy,” and she has “absolutely no love for MAGA or the Trump circle that Bobby’s now a part of,” the insider also said.
As if to signal Hines’ distaste for Trump world, Oppenheimer’s report made note of the fact that she didn’t join her husband at Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress Tuesday night. But Hines’ reported discomfort with the president’s MAGA ideology may surprise a lot of people, given that she appeared to shed her persona as a sensibly-minded Hollywood liberal to bask in her proximity to power once Trump was re-elected to the White House.
Hines willingly played the role of “MAGA wife,” as she joined her husband for a victory party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the election. She also radiated happiness while attending Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and related festivities, including the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Ball. She and Kennedy’s socialite daughter, Kick Kennedy, looked excited to be at one of the biggest D.C. parties of the year.
Cheryl Hines (R) looks on as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on his nomination on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 29, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Getty Images)
But apparently it’s a “sacrifice” for Hines to leave her $6 million estate in the exclusive Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and live in Washington, D.C., even if her home could be a charming townhouse in “trendy” Georgetown, according to Oppenheimer. Hines nonetheless would make the move in order to “keep a close watch on Bobby,” the insider said.
In recent years, Kennedy has become a controversial national figure because of his long history of trafficking in “innumerable unproven and dangerous conspiracy theories” about vaccines, AIDS, COVID-19 and other health issues, as the Atlantic said. He’s also became the butt of late-night jokes after claiming that a worm ate part of his brain and bizarrely boasting about dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park.
And then there was his reputation as a serial adulterer during his first two marriages to Emily Black and Mary Richardson. Kennedy’s own “sex diary,” published by the New York Post in 2013, revealed that he repeatedly cheated on Richardson, who was reportedly distraught over his serial philandering and their impending divorce before she died by suicide in 2013. In the red-bound journal found in her home, Kennedy wrote about struggling with his biggest defect — “my lust demons” — as he also detailed his sexual encounters with at least 16 women, according to the New York Post.
Kennedy also was accused of sexually assaulting his children’s babysitter in 1998, as Vanity Fair reported. The alleged assault came up in his contentious confirmation hearing to become the head of Health and Human Services. Kennedy denied the allegation and claimed it had been “debunked.”
Hines was well aware of Kennedy’s “long history of womanizing” when she met Kennedy, and she actually began seeing him when he was still married to Richardson, Oppenheimer reported. But Hines was nonetheless “blindsided” when her husband’s alleged year-long sexting affair with Nuzzi became the talk of Washington, D.C., in late September and early October.
Lurid reports about the scandal included claims that Kennedy vowed to “impregnate” the journalist after meeting her when she interviewed him for a New York magazine story. As the Nuzzi scandal broke, Mediaite also reported that three more women, who were affiliated with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization, claimed that they, too, had affairs with the former environmental lawyer over the past year.
In early October, Oppenheimer was reporting for the Daily Mail that Hines had reached the limits of her marriage to the “egomaniacal” and politically polarizing Kennedy and was considering a divorce. Even though Hines was aware of her husband’s “checkered” sexual history, she firmly believed that he “finally had his sex demons under control” with his political aspiration and as he reached his seventh decade, a friend told Oppenheimer.
But in mid-October, Hines publicly rejected the divorce rumors at a Hollywood event. Speaking to reporters at the 50th anniversary party for the Groundlings comedy theater troupe, she said she was “feeling good” and relying on her love “connection” with Kennedy to help them weather the various controversies around them. At the time, Hines also was dealing with the backlash over Kennedy’s decision to suspend his own presidential candidacy and endorse Trump.
“There’s, like, a connection that you look at your husband or your partner and all the crazy going on around you, or you look and you check in and it’s like, ‘OK. It’s going to be OK,’” Hines told a reporter for Us Weekly, who noted that she also was wearing her wedding ring.
But as Oppenheimer is reporting this week, Hines may be worried that things won’t be “OK” if her husband is left on his own in Washington, D.C., A longtime friend of Kennedy’s previously told the author that “any woman who gets involved with Bobby does so with eyes wide open, or their brains lopped off.”
“Any woman who thinks they’re going to change Bobby is misguided and purposefully ignorant,” the friend said. “Women have to understand what they’re getting into when they’re with him.”
