(Headline USA) Disgraced former Congress member and ex-convict Anthony Weiner will host a weekly radio show with Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, WABC-AM radio officials announced.
The pair, who both have run losing campaigns for New York City mayor, will argue politics on a show called “The Left vs. The Right,” WABC said in a news release Friday.
Weiner, a Democrat, represented a New York City district in Congress for nearly 12 years before resigning in 2011 over lewd photos sent to several women.
A 2013 bid for the Democratic mayoral nomination was derailed by new revelations of explicit photos Weiner had sent under the alias “Carlos Danger.”
The scandal played a significant role in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential defeat due to Weiner’s marriage at the time to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Just weeks before the election, the FBI was forced to reopen its closed investigation into Clinton’s private email server after a cache of emails was discovered on Weiner’s laptop.
Although Peter Strzok, the corrupt counterintelligence agent leading the probe, attempted to conceal the new evidence, top brass feared that if it were to wait until after the election and were then divulged, the revelation would negatively impact the FBI’s perception at the time as an apolitical, nonbiased law-enforcement institution.
Weiner pleaded guilty in 2017 to transferring obscene material to a 15-year-old girl and was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He was released from prison and then from a Brooklyn halfway house in 2019.
Weiner, 57, told the New York Post that the radio show isn’t part of a larger comeback plan. “I am not going back into public life, I am doing a radio show with a friend of mine,” he said.
Sliwa, 67, gained fame in the 1980s patrolling the streets and subways in a red beret as leader of the Guardian Angels. He later admitted faking some of the group’s heroic rescues for publicity.
Sliwa has hosted radio shows for decades, mostly on WABC, a talk radio station owned by supermarket magnate and Republican donor John Catsimatidis.
Sliwa secured the Republican nomination for mayor in 2021 but lost to Democrat Eric Adams in the general election by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
Sliwa told the Post he believes Weiner, who must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, deserves a second chance. “I think being on the radio he can become a role model for other people who have had major issues in their life,” Sliwa said.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
