Former Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has turned to social media in order to keep spreading the false conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election that got him kicked off the air at New York City radio station WABC last week.
Monday marked the relaunch of The Rudy Giuliani Show on YouTube after his suspension. “The mayor will host the show online until further notice,” spokesperson Ted Goodman told The Daily Beast.
Although Giuliani insisted on X that he’d been “FIRED for refusing to give in” and stop airing the Big Lie, WABC owner John Catsimatidis clarified that no official decision has been made on the former mayor’s future at the station.
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“I never fire anybody without having a sit down, and an understanding of what went wrong,” he told the New York Post. He told CNN that Giuliani was in Florida and unable to return to New York for a sit-down due to a bum knee.
The trouble at WABC exploded into the light on Friday, when Giuliani was yanked off the air for what Catsimatidis said in a statement was ignoring repeated orders to stop spreading the Big Lie.
“Guiliani has admitted repeatedly over the past few days that he agreed not to speak about Dominion,” Catsimatidis told CNN. “However, he was also warned numerous times, particularly in the past few months, to refrain from any allegations of electronic voting manipulation surrounding the 2020 election.”
On Monday, Giuliani said during his YouTube stream that he had no idea what Catsimatidis was talking about. He said he’d received a warning letter on Thursday “out of the clear blue sky,” claiming he hadn’t known anything about the “overly broad” policy restricting him from speaking about the election.
The letter, a portion of which he read aloud, reminded the former mayor that he was “prohibited from engaging in conversations relating to the 2020 Presidential Election on your programs broadcast on WABC Radio,” including topics related to “the legitimacy of the election results, allegations of fraud effectuated by election workers, and your personal lawsuits relating to those allegations.”
The warning failed to work, with Giuliani ranting for roughly three minutes about the “stolen election” on his Thursday show. That night, he reportedly texted Catsimatidis that he would be “disregarding every order given in this letter.”
His suspension went into effect the next day, with his show being erased from the WABC schedule and website.
But Giuliani has no plans to stop spreading bogus claims about President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, as he said on his Monday YouTube stream. “If we are submitted to the dictate of John Catsimatidis, doesn’t it become more likely they cheat in 2024?” he asked.
Giuliani went on to imply that Catsimatidis had been “lying about me” in order to hold up his end of what he later referred to as “some kind of deal with the devil, Dominion,” a reference to the voting systems firm currently suing Newsmax for defamation. (The right-wing cable channel is attempting to forcibly depose Catsimatidis in the case in an attempt to find out why Dominion hasn’t also sued him and WABC, pointing out that the station has “broadcast numerous statements by Rudy Giuliani concerning Dominion and allegations of voter fraud.”)
Meanwhile, the scrolling ticker under his screen informed viewers that “the mayor refused to agree to such an [sic] demand as it goes against everything he stands for when it comes to free speech in America” and that he couldn’t be “censored or bullied into silence” on YouTube.
This isn’t the one-time Trump lawyer’s first rodeo on YouTube. He has long hosted a nightly talk show on the platform called America’s Mayor Live. On Friday, in seeming response to his suspension, he posted an episode in which he accused Catsimatidis of bowing to liberal interests.
“You fired me to interfere in the election—because once a Democrat, always a Democrat—and you’re sucking up to them, John,” Giuliani sneered.
On Monday, he promised his YouTube audience that he would continue to cover “relevant news,” including election conspiracy theories, every day on YouTube. It was not immediately clear how the vow would be impacted by his mounting legal debts, nor the criminal charges he’s facing in Georgia and Arizona over efforts to reverse Trump’s loss in the election.
