Last year, in the midst of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential run, a Variety reporter asked him whether he was willing to become Donald Trump’s running mate. “I don’t think that my marriage would survive it,” he said, pointing to his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines. “I think he’s right,” she added. Kennedy didn’t become the president’s running mate, but some months later, he did endorse Trump—and his marriage appears to have survived it. Currently, Hines is on a press tour to promote her upcoming memoir, Unscripted. In her public appearances thus far, she seems very much on board.
On Tuesday, in a testy interview on The View, Hines parried attacks on her husband’s spreading of health misinformation and defended his qualifications to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The next day, Meghan McCain’s interview show “Citizen McCain” aired a long sit-down interview with Hines where she spoke affectionately of DC’s glamorous Republican women and offered advice on getting past political differences in a marriage. In her press tour, Hines has addressed vaccine skepticism, brainworms, life in DC, and her husband’s odd gym attire. Here’s what you need to know.
Hines’s Marriage Seems Okay
In her public appearances, Hines’s overwhelming posture has been that of a devoted spouse. She tells charming anecdotes about her eccentric husband (he feeds their pet ravens while shirtless!) and tries to make his more controversial positions seem benign (can’t we all agree that vaccines should be safer?). In August, a Wall Street Journal reporter asked if Hines’s memoir, which is under a tight embargo, presents a positive depiction of her marriage. “One would deduce that we love each other and are still married and whatever we’ve been through is behind us,” Hines replied.
Hines Is Not Talking About the Alleged Sexting Affair
Mostly, when Hines has faced tough questions from the press, they’ve been about health misinformation—not about her husband’s alleged sexting relationship with former New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi. (Nuzzi lost her job over the whole ordeal last fall. At the time, the Daily Beast reported that it wasn’t the alleged affair that threatened Kennedy’s marriage—he’s fought fairly public battles with his “lust demons” in the past—but his political migration toward Trump.) The Wall Street Journal asked Hines about the scandal in August, and she declined to comment, aside from saying that “I don’t think there’s any point to going through every rumor and headline to try to defend or explain it.”
Hines Breaks Her Silence on the Brain Worm
On the View, Behar asked a clarifying question: “Does he or does he not have a brain worm?” Hines replied, “It ate just a little bit of his brain and died, so don’t worry.” (“Wait, what died? The brain died?” said Whoopi Goldberg.)
A Theory of Why RFK Jr. Exercises in Jeans
Kennedy has been spotted in multiple DC gyms wearing jeans and hiking boots. Hines has a theory of why. Apparently, Kennedy never misses a workout—and this means that whenever he flies somewhere and only has a short window before his next obligation, he’ll just go to the nearest gym and exercise in whatever he’s wearing. Hines implied that it got him into the habit of working out in casual clothes. He also apparently doesn’t have a gym bag and “doesn’t care what he looks like when he’s working out.”
Hines Is Careful About Trump
Eleven years ago, when Hines married Kennedy, he was a Democrat in good standing: an environmental activist from a storied Democratic family who sued big corporations and had spoken at the DNC. “So for Bobby to, in the course of a year and a half [or] two years, go from a Democrat to working with President Trump—that’s a leap,” Hines conceded on The View. Co-host Sonny Hostin had asked bluntly: “So you were supportive of his decision to support Trump?” and Hines gave a faltering response. “I was, at the beginning, um—what’s the word? Um, I was guarded about it. It was complicated. Because that was a big change, politically.”
Kennedy himself has discussed how tough the Trump stuff has been on his wife. “She’s a lifelong Democrat and the idea of me supporting Donald Trump as president was just … something that she would have never imagined, that she never wanted in her life,” he told a reporter from TMZ last year. “She went along with it because she loves me and she wanted to be supportive of me, but it was not something that she ever encouraged.”
But Nonetheless, Hines Is Not Criticizing MAGA
“I like everybody in there,” Hines told McCain of the Trump administration. “I have a genuinely good time with these guys.” Asked which member of the administration is most like a Hollywood star, Hines struggled, saying a lot of them had “that thing.” Finally, she landed on Pete Hegseth, whom she said she could imagine in a war movie, “flying the plane or whatever.”
Hines Apparently Lives in DC
Back in April, after Kennedy was sworn in to lead HHS, he and Hines purchased a $4.4 million townhouse in Georgetown. But while Kennedy is seen around town quite a lot (at the Gold’s Gym in Georgetown, at a tanning bed in Cleveland Park, swimming in the noxious waters of Rock Creek), Hines has rarely been spotted, leading to speculation that she actually still lives in LA. In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hines “lives in D.C. and continues to spend time in Los Angeles.” To McCain, Hines appeared to explain her low profile this way: “This summer was so hot. First of all, I’ve been writing a lot. I had to finish this book, and I would make myself—I would get up at five in the morning, sit at a little chair, and just write. I wouldn’t let myself go anywhere all day or all night. So I sort of missed some stuff in DC.”
Despite It All, Hines Appreciates Her New Home
“I really like it here,” Hines told McCain. “It’s a beautiful city. I mean, just driving around the city—the architecture is just so beautiful, and the lighting of the buildings. I really am inspired by that.” While she conceded on The View that being a political spouse was “not the life I imagined,” she says she’s adapting to it. She told McCain that she goes to “cabinet spouse meetings” where “we’re all sitting around a conference table and talking about ethics. It’s interesting.” She also said that she’s becoming acclimated to the DC norm that “when I’m invited to a casual night with the girls, they’ll say ‘off the record.’ ” (“It’s like, ‘Oh, so we’re usually on the record? I’ve got to really watch it.’”)
In general, Hines portrays herself as a political naif—someone who was never too involved, but got a “crash course in learning about politics” through her husband’s campaign. Now, she claims to sort of like it; “there is a side of politics I find fascinating,” she told McCain. She loves “little phrases like, ‘a whisper campaign’ ” and “walking down the deserted hallways of a building and you’re with security and everyone’s walking fast.”
MAGA Women Look Great
In public, Hines has walked a delicate line of praising MAGA without endorsing its politics. (“The Republicans have really been nice to me.”) Another way she’s done that is complimenting the appearance of conservative women. “I think there’s a new glamour in DC,” she told McCain, then added, “I mean, listen—when Melania Trump is setting the bar, that’s high. That’s a high bar.” To the Wall Street Journal, she said of DC Republicans, “These ladies are bringing it.”
Things Seem Chilly With the Kennedy Clan
In recent years, as RFK Jr. drifted rightward, his famous family has broken with him. The highest-profile denunciation came from his cousin, Caroline Kennedy—daughter of president John F. Kennedy—who wrote a letter in advance of his confirmation hearings urging the Senate to reject his nomination, calling him a “predator” who’s addicted to power. “Her comments did make me angry,” Hines told the Wall Street Journal in August. “I was surprised because we never see her or talk to her.”
In that same interview, Hines addressed Caroline’s son, Jack Schlossberg, a social media personality who’s been needling his uncle online. “Her son’s behavior—I don’t even want to say anything,” Hines said, “because anything I say, he’s going to think, he’s going to be, umm, excited that someone’s talking about him. I don’t understand what’s going on with him.”
McCain did ask if Hines has been visiting old Kennedy haunts in DC, and Hines was vague yet diplomatic: “I’ve been to a lot of, uh, you know, meeting rooms and rooms and the White House and the different rooms at the White House and, um, yeah…It’s interesting when you walk into the White House and you see Bobby’s uncle’s portrait hanging. It’s pretty amazing.”
Hines Has Advice for Navigating Marital Differences
On “Citizen McCain,” Hines fielded an audience question about how to keep a relationship alive “in such a politically charged climate.” She said it was a good question, and advised starting fraught conversations by saying “we might end up agreeing to disagree.” Then, “when you are in that conversation and it does get tough” you should “not let it bleed over into something bigger or mean or hurtful.” She advised to instead step back and say, “I want to talk to you about this [but] I’ve got to take a break, I can feel myself heating up and I don’t want to be in that space with you.” Hines said that’s “hard to do, but it’s not impossible.” More specific to her own marriage, she told the Wall Street Journal that “Bobby and I talk about everything, so that’s how we move through everything, and we’re really good friends, and we trust each other.”
Hines Is Slippery on Vaccines
When The View’s Joy Behar brought up that RFK Jr. has cast doubt on vaccine efficacy, Hines pivoted quickly to discussing vaccine-related injuries, acknowledging that vaccines are “an important part of our healthcare” while suggesting that it’s important to make them better and safer and to listen to parents who think vaccines have hurt their kids. Shortly afterward, Behar’s colleague, the former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin, noted that it’s caused panic and confusion for the country’s “top public health official” to tell pregnant women not to take Tylenol when their ob-gyns say it’s safe. Hines deflected, saying that the message from her husband and Trump was merely to “consult your doctor.”
John McCain Was Apparently Quite Attracted to Hines
On “Citizen McCain,” Meghan noted that her dad—the late Senator John McCain—was a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which Hines starred. “He was also in love with you, which I think I can say now, because he’s dead,” McCain said. “But he thought you were, like, the most beautiful woman in the world other than my mother.” Hines seemed chuffed. “I hope that’s not inappropriate,” McCain said later. “No, it’s highly appropriate,” Hines replied.
