Radio station owner dumps on Rudy Giuliani after suspending him over election rants
Rudy Giuliani is out of a job hosting a talk radio program after the station owner unloaded on the former New York City mayor.
WABC-AM owner John Catsimatidis suspended Giuliani for questioning the legitimacy of president Joe Biden's election win and said he had little choice but to fire the former Donald Trump attorney, who had been warned like all the station's other hosts not to discuss electronic voting machines or their accuracy during the 2020 election, reported the New York Post.
“It’s pretty hard to bring him back,” Catsimatidis told the newsapper. “His behavior makes it very hard to reverse course. He makes it hard not to terminate him.”
Catsimatidis cautioned the station's hosts after receiving a letter from lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, which had sued other media outlets for defamation over Trump's false election claims, and Giuliani called Catsimatidis a “bald-faced liar” after his suspension, saying he had been talking about the 2020 election on his show for four years.
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The station owner said Giuliani's comments about the election were bleeped out so they did not reach the airwaves, and Giuliani complained Friday on his "America's Mayor" show on X.
“What John Catsimatidis has done is disgraceful. With the pretense that he was building some kind of a First Amendment station, he blew a hole in the First Amendment that’s so big you can’t even find it," Giuliani said. "You can’t tell somebody not to talk about the 2020 presidential election and tell me that you have a respect for free speech."
Catsimatidis lamented on the situation Sunday, when he filled in for Giuliani on the radio program, but indicated that he would probably be forced to fire the ex-mayor, who has continued to attack the station owner as "anti-American."
“What happened last week was very tragic,” Catsimatidis said. “When I hired Rudy I got a lot of criticism. In this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty.”