After a brief suspension, Rudy Giuliani has been fired from his gig as a host on AM radio.
WABC owner John Catsimatidis confirmed Giuliani’s termination Sunday during an interview with the New York olPost. The billionaire mogul slammed Giuliani for running afoul of his three-strike policy.
Catsimatidis originally suspended Giuliani for trying to mention Dominion Voting Systems on air. He’d ordered all his hosts to refrain from the subject after the company’s defamation suit against Fox News Channel, an outlet owned by the same parent company as the New York Post.
The radio owner said he had to “bleep” Giuliani. “That was strike 1,” he told the NY Post.
Catsimatidis accused Giuliani of making “an ultimatum to double the hours of his show–or else,” and he named that as “strike two.”
Then, Giuliani disparaged the radio mogul on Twitter for silencing him.
“What John Catsimatidis has done is disgraceful,” Giuliani said Friday in a Twitter Space. “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. 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 considered that disparagement “strike three.” He fired Giuliani and gave one of his staffers 30 days’ notice for her termination.
“It’s pretty hard to bring him back,” Catsimatidis told the Post. “His behavior makes it very hard to reverse course. He makes it hard not to terminate him.”
Catsimatidis himself reportedly guest-hosted Giuliani’s scheduled show at 10 on Sunday morning, along with WABC stalwarts Curtis Sliwa and Dominick Carter.
“What happened last week was very tragic,” Catsimatidis reportedly said on air, while still describing Giuliani as an excellent mayor.
Giuliani blasted back and called the media mogul a “bald-faced liar.”
“I’ve been talking about the 2020 election on the show for four years,” he told the New York Post. “What’s changed in the last four years?”
WABC, formerly owned by the American Broadcasting Corporation, ranks as one of the nation’s oldest radio stations. It currently airs on AM radio as part of the conservative talk radio format.
It was once one of the nation’s most trafficked radio station, and radio — as a medium — maintains an incredible reach. According to Nielsen data reviewed by Forbes, the average American listens to four hours of audio content per day… with more than two hours spent on radio.