In light of Rudy Giuliani’s public meltdown following the 2020 election, Fox News has reportedly barred Donald Trump’s ex-personal attorney from appearing on its airwaves for the past three months. Giuliani first learned of the ban, which is seemingly predicated on his promotion of election-fraud conspiracy theories, on the night before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, as his scheduled appearance on Fox & Friends for a segment commemorating the victims of the attacks was canceled.
According to a Politico Playbook report, Fox & Friends Weekend cohost Pete Hegseth called up Giuliani to inform him that his name had been crossed out from the show’s guest list. A spokesperson for Fox pushed back against Politico’s report, which also noted that the decision to ban Giuliani came from top network officials, telling The Hillthat he was never scheduled for a guest appearance on the anniversary of 9/11. Though, the network declined to comment when asked if there is or is not a network-wide Giuliani ban. According to Politico, the ban also extends to son Andrew Giuliani, who is running for New York governor.
Those close to Giuliani say he views the move as a stab in the back. “Rudy is really hurt because he did a big favor for Rupert [Murdoch]. He was instrumental in getting Fox on Time Warner so it could be watched in New York City,” a source close to the former New York mayor told Politico, referencing the Giuliani administration’s work in 1996 to lobby Time Warner to pick up Fox News as a start-up channel.
Giuliani took up his complaints against the network Friday onSteve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “It’s really strange that I’m on probation at a time in which just about everything I said [about the 2020 election] is being corroborated,” he said. “They’re actually reporting all the things they claim I misled them about now, because every time they report something in the New York Post, they’re reporting me––I gave it to the New York Post…. I gave them the hard drive, every fact they have comes from me.” (Giuliani is presumably referring to a hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.) He went on to say that his claims about the Arizona election being stolen from Trump have now been corroborated, even as a GOP-backed audit on Friday affirmed Joe Biden won the state.
It’s understandable why Fox might be especially wary of putting Giuliani, and his wild election conspiracies, on the air these days. In March, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion suit against Fox News, alleging it “sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes”; Fox has moved to dismiss the suit. Separately, Giuliani is facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion over his false accusations that the company aided in stealing the election from Trump. In August, a federal judge denied Giuliani’s motion to dismiss Dominion’s lawsuit against him. Giuliani’s legal team responded to the suit via a court filing in which they acknowledged that Giuliani does not understand the company’s voting software intricacies while still asserting that Dominion’s “claims are barred in whole or in part because some and/or all of Giuliani’s statements complained of are substantially true.”
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