Rudy Giuliani retreats to Steve Bannon's War Room after WABC cuts ties

Bannon and Giuliani attack station owner John Catsimatidis

Video file

Citation

From the May 10, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): New York Times lead story just blasting across the take, you've been fired by WABC, John Catsimatidis, your show has been canceled, I understand now Dr. Maria Ryan has been fired, the number one show on Sunday mornings, the one you do with Dr. Maria Ryan that's been canceled? Any truth? Because the New York Times is full of fake news, is this true? 

RUDY GIULIANI (GUEST): It's absolutely true. We’re also the leading show at 3 o'clock in New York, leading Hannity, for that matter.

BANNON: Hold it. You were fired -- hang on. You were fired, I want to be very specific, you were fired according to the New York Times because you talked about the 2020 election and John Catsimatidis says there's nothing but fallacies.

GIULIANI: Only a thousand times. Yeah, well, I don't know, I don't know what, I've -- I talked about the 2020 elections from the day I realized they were fixed until now and I've talked about it on that station I would say a thousand times. They now tell me there was a policy that I wasn't allowed to talk about the 2020 elections. I never heard about the policy until yesterday. And even if there was a policy, just go back and listen to the last three and a half years, and I commented, I'd say almost every day. 

And what they wanted me to agree to, to retain my job, knowing that I'm in fairly difficult financial circumstances, and they also, by the way, leaked this before they told me, which will give you an idea of what dishonorable people they are.

...

BANNON: WABC and John Catsimatidis and all the hosts over there, let me be blunt. Donald J. Trump won the 2020 election, Biden stole it, Biden is illegitimate, and if any of the hosts want to come on or Catsimatidis wants a lesson on this, we will go through chapter and verse. Look at the hearing in Georgia the last couple of days, it's completely, completely, absolutely outrageous. Is WABC arguing that the 2020 election was not stolen and they will fire you for talking about Joe Biden stealing it because they will lose half of the audience of WABC, and quite frankly they ought to lose all the audience.  

GIULIANI: They're sucking up behind Newmax's back with Dominion. John and the president of Dominion have had secret talks for the last three or four years. It's now come to the point where Newsmax is raising in the lawsuit, why did ABC get special treatment? How come Giuliani is allowed to talk about this all the time and they want to depose John. And John is trying to avoid turning anything over, deposing anything, and that's why it comes up now.

...

BANNON: John Catsimatidis didn't call you in and didn't sit you down and explain all this and walk you through it?

GIULIANI: You think they got the guts to do all that? Get out of here. They're a bunch of weasels. C'mon. People that do this kind of stuff are not strong men. They wouldn't sit down man to man. Every time I saw down man to man with John all he would do is give me bull.

The New York Times reports:

Rudolph W. Giuliani was suspended by WABC radio on Friday and his daily talk show was abruptly canceled after the station said he violated its policy by trying to discuss discredited claims about the 2020 presidential election on air.

John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Republican businessman who owns the station, said he had made the decision after Mr. Giuliani refused to avoid the topic despite repeated warnings.

“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in a brief phone interview. “We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

...

By Mr. Catsimatidis’s account, the events that prompted Mr. Giuliani’s suspension escalated on Thursday, as the host railed against the legal cases against him and the suspension of his law license in New York. He was midsentence when employees in the control room cut him off.

Curtis Sliwa, a former Republican candidate for mayor and host of another WABC program, quickly cut in to announce “breaking news” about a legal case involving Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s former Democratic governor.