A Trump-allied radio station owner banned election denial but has now changed his tune
Days after President Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims helped inspire his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a prominent New York City radio station issued a policy banning its hosts from saying the election results “are not valid or that the election is not over.”
“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” the station’s owner, John Catsimatidis, told the New York Times in 2024 after he had one of its most visible hosts, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, yanked off the air for turning his show into a fount of false election fraud claims.
Since that dramatic denunciation of one of the country’s most visible election deniers, Catsimatidis’ 50,000-watt station in Lower Manhattan has returned to the theme it once banned.
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In nearly half a dozen appearances on the station since 2021, Trump claimed he either won the 2020 election or that it was rigged, according to a review of the station’s publicly available archives. Once, when Trump did not express election denialism, that sentiment was expressed by the station’s host, Sid Rosenberg. In July 2024, Rosenberg said the former president should not filter himself on the campaign trail, saying on-air: “Trump is the guy that’s won three consecutive primaries, is going to win three consecutive elections.”
The station’s owner has also come around on the issue.
“There’s no way Biden got 81 million votes in reality,” Catsimatidis told Straight Arrow News in a recent interview. Referring to last year’s election of a New York’s Democratic Socialist mayor, whom Catsimatidis openly opposed, he added: “The election results in the mayor’s race smells a little bit.”
A policy against election skepticism and denials
Catsimatidis is a billionaire real estate and energy magnate who donated to Democrats in the 1990s before supporting Donald Trump and a bevy of Republican causes. Over the years, he became further involved in politics and media. After an unsuccessful mayoral run in 2013, Catsimatidis tried his hand at hosting a radio show, attracting a steady stream of guests for friendly, unchallenging interviews.
In 2016, he endorsed Trump and three years later purchased WABC Radio, where he cheered on his longtime real estate friend. Catsimatidis soon began co-hosting a show six days a week and guest-hosting whenever he wanted. Based in Lower Manhattan with a 50,000-watt signal, one radio expert called WABC “the biggest station in the biggest market.”
Catsimatidis drew a red line in 2021. After Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capital while Congress was certifying Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden, Catsimatidis issued a policy to his radio staff, which was later provided to a reporter. The policy instructed on-air staff “to not state, suggest or imply that the election results are not valid or that the election is not over.” Violating the policy, it said, could lead to “termination.”
Giuliani paid a steep price for insisting, without verified evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent. In addition to losing his show on WABC Radio, he was disbarred, settled two defamation lawsuits, and filed for bankruptcy.
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The attorney general in Trump’s first term, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.
An anti-election denier and his station make a U-turn
Election denialism is not harmless rhetoric, according to Kelly Rader, Research Director at the States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization helping local officials fortify their election processes and results. In a statement to Straight Arrow, Kelly said election denialism “remains a defining force in 2026.”
“With Trump in the White House, election conspiracies that should be dismissed as baseless are taking center stage this midterm cycle,” Rader said. Election denial “isn’t just rhetoric,” she added, but rather “a strategy to undermine trust in election results and interfere with how elections are run.”
Even as he banned his hosts from undermining the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Catsimatidis seemed intent on doing just that, albeit with a healthy dose of unseriousness.
“I don’t know what the truth is,” Catsimatidis said in January 2021 when asked about the presidential election. “This is going to go down as who killed John Kennedy. OK? That’s my satire,” he said, because, “nobody’s really sure who really killed John Kennedy. Right?”
But just five months after banning election denialism on WABC Radio airwaves, Trump appeared on the station providing just that.
“It was a rigged election,” Trump said in a June 19, 2021 interview with host Bo Snerdley. “And it’s all coming out now.” As Trump claimed the election was rigged, Snerdley agreed, adding, “That’s exactly right.”
A year later, Trump linked the issue of illegal immigration and voter fraud. After telling a WABC interviewer in Sept. 2022 that millions of people were “pouring into our country,” Trump quickly added that powerful Democratic lawmakers “don’t want to have voter ID.”
In May 2024, Trump appeared on the show Catimatidis co-hosted with longtime media personality Rita Cosby. “The only thing they’re good at is cheating on elections,” Trump said. The remark went unchallenged. In Oct. 2024, Trump told the station that if you do not have policies like his, then “The only way you can win an election is if you cheat.”
In April, Trump told a WABC interviewer, “We did great in that 2020 election, unbelievable. We won that thing by so much.”
Last month when WABC raised eyebrows by hiring Trump’s former lawyer, and one-time critic Michael Cohen as a host, Catsimatidis said the president had personally approved the move, now that he and Cohen reconciled.
Catsimatidis gets on board with election skepticism
By 2026, Catsimatidis was helping spread the kind of skepticism he once prohibited. In July, Catsimatidis and his wife donated to the Minnesota gubernatorial campaign of Mike Lindell, a prominent 2020 election denier.
“Minnesota tends to elect characters,” Catsimatidis said in an interview when asked about donating to Lindell. When asked about Lindell’s role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Catsimatidis said, “The 2020 results smell a little bit. It happened. Nobody is going to say go back to change them.”
Catsimatidis then said the results of the 2025 mayoral election were suspicious, citing work done by an activist he had on his show last month, Marly Honik. She cited “commercial tools” used by investigators she hired to claim that 23 percent of the ballots cast were fraudulent.
One person who is unconvinced by Honik’s research is Curtis Sliwa. He worked for years at WABC Radio and left the station to run for mayor in 2025 as a Republican and decided not to return after its host publicly pressured him to drop out of the race, so the opposition to Mamdani could unite behind a higher-polling candidate.
“There was no outside interference,” Sliwa told Straight Arrow. “There were no accusations at that time that something strange was happening. To suddenly bring it up now just means you’re a sore loser.” He added: “Anyone who reverts to election denying has no ground to stand on.”
Giuliani, the former mayor and host who was abruptly removed for saying the kind of election skepticism that is now commonly heard at his old station, did not return multiple messages for comment.