For years, Cheryl Hines was one of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals.
In the past, the 60-year-old actress would even publicly distance herself from husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr‘s most controversial views.
But friends who’ve known Hines for years have seen a dramatic transformation since Kennedy became a member of Donald Trump‘s cabinet, and are horrified that she’s ‘gone MAGA’.
Sources close to the Curb Your Enthusiasm starlet told the Daily Mail that the change is ‘beyond comprehension’, and they don’t recognize who the longtime Democrat has become.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, she has been unwavering in her husband’s defense – even when he was accused of a digital affair with New York Magazine Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi last year – and her friends are baffled.
‘It’s so hard to make sense in my head because she was so liberal before,’ said one Hollywood friend who has known Hines since they were in their 20s.
‘And now, she’s married to a member of the Trump administration and she’s literally defending his ridiculous s*** on the View.’
Earlier this month, Hines appeared on the long-running morning talk show to promote her new memoir, Unscripted.
During the show, she got into a sparring match with Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar as they grilled her about her husband’s anti-vax beliefs.
Friends who’ve known Cheryl Hines for years have seen a dramatic transformation since RFK became a member of Donald Trump’s cabinet, and are horrified that she’s ‘gone MAGA’.
‘Can we listen to parents who say, my child got the vaccine and changed and stopped hitting markers, stopped developing the way they were developing—can we listen to people when they say that?’ an exasperated Hines finally said on the show.
She also defended her husband when the hosts called him the ‘most unqualified HHS secretary in history,’ pointing out that he had advocated for product safety for most of his career.
‘I watched that and I was like “who are you and what have you done to Cheryl?” a source told the Daily Mail.
‘It was surreal to watch. I know she loves her husband, but it feels like she abandoned what she believed to be with him.’
Hines has never shied away from condemning her husband in the past.
In 2022, she called his comments saying the unvaccinated face more oppression than people who lived in Nazi Germany ‘reprehensible and insensitive’.
‘My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,’ she added.
Hines and Kennedy, 71, got married in 2014 at the Kennedy Compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
‘At the time, it made sense, her marrying a Kennedy,’ said the Hollywood friend. ‘But I didn’t see this coming.’
Another friend, who has known Hines since she was studying radio and television production at the University of Central Florida, also expressed shock at the actress’s sudden change of heart.
Sources close to the Curb Your Enthusiasm starlet told the Daily Mail that the change is ‘beyond comprehension’, and they don’t recognize who the longtime Democrat has become
Hines passionately defended her husband on The View last week when the hosts claimed he was one of the most unqualified HHS Secretary’s of all time
Hines has never shied away from condemning her husband in the past. They are pictured together at the Al Smith dinner in New York in October 2024
‘We don’t talk politics,’ the friend told the Daily Mail. ‘We can’t talk politics. If we do, it just goes south.
‘It’s like she’s gone MAGA, or at least MAHA, which is just so…beyond comprehension to me.’
‘She went from “That side is bonkers” to “Well, they have some good points,” and ‘MAGA people mean well, they’re not bad people.’
‘It makes me wonder if she was like this all along or if something has shifted in her ethics and morals.’
A crew member of Curb Your Enthusiasm tells the Daily Mail that Hines’ politics are unrecognizable from when she joined the show in 1999.
‘She was 100 per cent a Democrat for as long as I worked with her, and proudly so,’ says the crew member, who worked on the show for 10 of its 12 seasons.
‘Encouraging people to vote blue, standing up for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, liberal politics. And now she’s completely on the other side.
A crew member of Curb Your Enthusiasm tells the Daily Mail that Hines’ politics are unrecognizable from when she joined the show in 1999
‘I believe that people can change and their opinions can drift, but this is a sudden shift that happened overnight, it seems. I respect her right to have an opinion, but this is just crazy to me.’
Hines has taken some high-profile public criticism for her husband’s beliefs, including from people in the television industry whom she had known for years.
‘I try to stay off social media as much as possible,’ she said on the Megan Kelly show earlier this month.
‘And then I see these texts and it’s like, ‘wow, that guy’s an a**hole.’ I was sort of confused because I didn’t understand what he was hoping for.’
‘I have a few friends, when Bobby stepped into the political arena, it became too difficult emotionally for them to stay close,’ Hines told CBS News earlier this month. ‘And I understand it.’
Asked what she thought Curb Your Enthusiasm creator and co-star Larry David thought about Kennedy joining President Trump’s Cabinet, she said, ‘That’ll be a question for Larry, but let’s be honest: he can’t love it.’
