December 22, 2025 • 14 mins
Curtis Sliwa fills in for Mark Simone and delves into the reasons why U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik has dropped out of the 2026 gubernatorial race in New York. Is President Trump to blame for Elise dropping out?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now the Red Beret has returned to radio. Curtis Leewall
guest host the Mark Simone Show on sevent ten woor
doesn't get any better than this, be on this iconic
(00:22):
radio station where the call letters the only place I
know of in America, and I've been on most stations
from time to time, there's only three letters wor oh.
And I remember the time that I had to carry
all the items from Bob Grant to King of Talk
Radio from the studios of WABC where he had been
(00:45):
fired by Bob Iger of Disney. When Disney owned WABC
and other talk radio stations, why would they be in
the talk radio business. It's controversial, but they were, and
nobody would have Bob Grant, who had helped so many
people at WABC. Nobody could touch Bob Grant, and so
(01:06):
I said, I'll bring it over, and I took some
of the hand trucks. I made trips back and forth
from WABC, which was the seventeenth four to two Penn
Plaza right by Madison Square Garden up to fourteen forty Broadway,
and everybody was amazed that I would do that. They say,
you know, if Bob Iger hears about this, he'll fire you.
(01:29):
You know what words I gave in his direction, I say,
are you kidding? Are you kidding? For this? A guy
who put us on the map WABC, Bob Grant. And
by the way, just a little bit of information in
the past. In nineteen seventy seven, Barry Farbath, the Great
Barry Farba, no longer with us, was the overnight host
(01:50):
here at wo R. He had just run against Bella
Abzick for Congress and had lost as a Conservative Republican.
And then he decided he was going to run for mayor,
as obviously I have twice. And in nineteen seventy seven
he was running against Ed Koch Mario Como. By the way, Andrew,
(02:15):
I knew your father, Mario. You know Mario Como. He
was on the Liberal party line. There was Barry Farber
on the conservative line, and Roy Goodman, who was the
Republican state Senator of the Upper east Side, the heir
to the x Lax fortune. He was a Rockefeller Liberal Republican.
They had twelve debates. Gay Pressman was the moderate of
(02:38):
twelve debates, and it was at Cotch who won. I
think Barry Farber got four percent and Roy Goodman got
about four percent. It was Cooch and Mariocomo who split
the rest of the votes. But it was a great
race to follow. So Barry Farber had left. Bob Grant
(02:59):
was the old host at WR that I listened to,
and then later on he was to return to WOR.
As I had mentioned when being fired by Bob Igar
of Disney and is he I had a substitute for
him for the first month. Uh, those fax machines didn't stop,
(03:20):
you know, it was like NonStop back then. The fax
machine would run you, Trader, why you there? Bob Grant
is your mentor you wouldn't be on talk radio WABC
without him. I said, exactly right, But this is the
business we have chosen. And if I got fired, Bob
(03:41):
Grant would say, why, I hope he lands on his feet,
and I knew he would. Those fax machines kept running
twenty four seven, three, six y five for like three
straight weeks with the most vile invectives that people could
scratch out and write out. And then of course there
was Barry Gray mid mornings. But I remember the personal
(04:04):
situation involving Barry Gray, who has missed a second Amendment
tough guy, but also he was the leader of those
that wanted to remove the horse drawn carriages from Central Park,
which I and my wife Nancy were in favor of,
and so many others. He was ahead of his time.
On the morning of June nineteenth, nineteen ninety two, on
(04:27):
my way to WABC to do the morning show Angels
in the Morning with my wife at the time, Lisa
now Lisa Ever's over at Channel five, I was shot
five times with hollow point bullets on the orders of
John Gotti Senior to John Gotti Junior and the Gambino
crime family. The guy Michael Ianatti was the guy who
shot me five times. He did twenty years for that.
(04:50):
But the interesting thing is, since I was being rushed
to Bellevue Hospital, they didn't know if I would live
or die. Lisa was on her way there, and my
producer at that time, Mike Thompson, took over the show,
and the first person to call in that morning was
very Gray, who had just finished the overnight said wor
(05:13):
concerned about what had happened to me. Weeks later, when
I came back on the air, the first caller into
the show was very great. I mean, these are the
men and in some cases women, like had mentioned Arlene
Francis Lynn Samuels over at WABC eclectic as she was.
(05:37):
They paved the way for all of us in talk radio,
and I will always honor that tradition because without them,
there would be no talk radio as we know it now,
or podcasts or all the other affiliated ways that you
can get your news, your information, your talk. And remember,
above any and all things, this is enter because if
(06:02):
it's not entertaining, you're not going to be listening. I guarantee.
But this is my homage to WOR because I've listened
to wr In fact, does anybody know is he? Where's
Eric Adams today? What country is he? In? His tax
payers expense? A man who got windned in pocket line,
the Swagerman with No Plant. There was a crooked mayor
(06:25):
many years ago. Bob Hope actually played him in the movie.
You should get that movie. It's absolutely incredible. Bob Hope
did a magnificent job playing the Swagerman with No Plan.
At that time with the Flappers during the time of
Speakeasy's Jimmy Walker, he had, like Eric Adams, about fifty
(06:46):
customized suits and he had ladies Galore, and FDR was
the governor who wanted to run for president on the
Democratic line, and he knew he had a problem because
Jimmy Walker was so hopelessly corrupt with the guidance of
Tammany Hall. And so he tells Jimmy Walker, you know,
(07:06):
I'm gonna have to use the power of the governorship
and fire you, which a governor can do. The governor
can fire the mayor. And Jimmy Walker understanding that his
days were numbered in that FDR needed to get Jimmy
Walker out of here so he could run for president
without having to also explain how that kind of corruption
(07:26):
could exist while FDR was the governor. You know what
Jimmy Walker did is he he took an ocean liner
with one of his gumatas one of his many females,
went to Paris, lived there for about ten years, came
back in the early forties, and you know what his
first job back was a talk show host here at wor.
(07:50):
You see, when you listen to me, you're gonna learn stuff.
You're gonna hear things that you probably wouldn't have heard
from other than March Simona himself more about radio than
any other person alive. Just to give you an idea.
I sat with Mark Simone early on in the campaign,
after I had announced for the Republican nomination, with my
(08:10):
very dear friend Paul Carlucci aka Johnny Legit at Nicolas
for three hours. We sat there. They were gonna give
me advice politically. We spoke for two and a half
hours about radio. That's all we talked about. That's the
love that Marc Simone has for radio. Poul Carlucci, who
at the time was the publisher of The New York Post.
(08:31):
Now actually he had already left that position, he had retired,
and yours truly imagine two and a half hours all
we talked about was radio. All we talked to because
that when you love radio, like so many of you do,
who listen to it morning, noon and night, you understand
what's good talk radio and you understand what's bad talk radio.
(08:53):
I need you all to do me a favor, though
when I run into you in the streets, which I
do quite often, so many people in so many places,
do not. Please, do not treat me like a gavon.
Do not tell me, oh, I voted for you, because
so far since the end of the campaign, and the
announcement of the results that zarround Mandami would be sworn
(09:13):
in as mayor on January first of this year. Everybody
comes up to me and says, I voted for you,
and then, being the Weisenheimer than I am, I do
a pivot in shift and I say, oh really, oh yeah,
my family voted for you too. Where you from? I'm
from Scarsdale? Ha ha, did you do that? He couldn't
vote for mayor. So don't tell me you voted for me,
(09:36):
because I will have to end up embarrassing you sometimes
in front of family and friends because you're trying to
pull my chain and chew my shorts. Don't do that.
If I had gotten every vote that people claimed that
they had cast on my behalf, I would have been
the mayor of the City of New York. So please,
(10:00):
let's get to the other key subject today. Give you
a little background information on what was a terrible loss
for the Republican Party nationally, the Republican Party in the
State of New York, and the Republican Party in the
City of New York, where we are extraordinarily weak. It says,
if we have been exposed to kryptonite by mostly Republicans.
(10:25):
Never mind the Democrats, by mostly Republicans, they go out
of their way to damage the brand and to damage
their candidates. You certainly saw that with me. Oh, vote
Ausle was a vote for Zoron, vote for Cmo. Yeah, Cromo,
who did that? President Donald Trump? Who did that? Elon Musk,
(10:46):
who did that? The billionaires, the masters of the universe
spent twenty million dollars doing that in the final weeks
of the campaign. But put me aside. We had a
star in the Republican Party who could touch Elise Stephanic.
Do you not remember when she was cross examining the
(11:12):
presidents of the Ivy League schools? Do you not remember?
You know? It was two years ago, December, two years ago,
one by one. First there was the Harvard president, Claudine Gay.
She knocked her out. Claudine Gay resigned after being cross
examined by Elise stefani. Number two was Elizabeth Magill University
(11:41):
of Pennsylvania. Knocked her out. She resigned right after that
interrogation by Elise Stefanik. The only one who suffered a
TKO at the hands of Elis Stefanic was Sally Kornbluth
of mit she somehow held on and what was it about?
It was simple. All that eleast Staphonic asked them is
(12:06):
would you call would you suggest that calling for genocide
of Jews violated the code of conduct at your university?
And they all did the chicken dance and said, well,
it depends on whether this was amazing. It depends on
(12:29):
whether your speech crossed into action. After that, they were
dead on arrival. But that was the first of many
cross examinations to come from what everyone realized was the
star of the Republican Party, tough, smart, young, think she's
(12:52):
a millennial and thinks she's like forty or forty one,
gave up a prestigious position as the US ambassador to
the United Nations. She would have been a clone of
Gene Kirkpatrick. Oh, we have a lot to talk about,
because there were so many other situations that were taking
(13:13):
place behind the scenes that none of you are aware of.
Why oh, why you saying to yourself, would at least
the phonic have dropped out on this late Friday. In
an election she had a real chance to win, and
really the only person who could have totally turned this
state around. You're not going anywhere You're going to keep
(13:33):
it right here on the dial. If you're just discovering
seven to ten Worr, this is your place to be.
Forget WABC always bashing Curtis and by the way, sinking
in the ratings, nobody giving them the kind of attention
that they were used to. But thank you, iHeart, thank
(13:53):
you Tom Cuddy, thank you WR for extending me this
microphone till January second, because I I'm gonna be blazing,
and I'm gonna be glazing some and I think, as
he most people would want to be glazed by Curtis Sleewer.
They would not want to be put on blast as
(14:14):
you've heard some of the people earlier today, right here
on your new place to be, seven to ten Wor.
Now the Red Beret has returned to radio. Curtis Leewall
guest host the Mark Simone Show on sevent ten woor
doesn't get any better than this, be on this iconic
(00:22):
radio station where the call letters the only place I
know of in America, and I've been on most stations
from time to time, there's only three letters wor oh.
And I remember the time that I had to carry
all the items from Bob Grant to King of Talk
Radio from the studios of WABC where he had been
(00:45):
fired by Bob Iger of Disney. When Disney owned WABC
and other talk radio stations, why would they be in
the talk radio business. It's controversial, but they were, and
nobody would have Bob Grant, who had helped so many
people at WABC. Nobody could touch Bob Grant, and so
(01:06):
I said, I'll bring it over, and I took some
of the hand trucks. I made trips back and forth
from WABC, which was the seventeenth four to two Penn
Plaza right by Madison Square Garden up to fourteen forty Broadway,
and everybody was amazed that I would do that. They say,
you know, if Bob Iger hears about this, he'll fire you.
(01:29):
You know what words I gave in his direction, I say,
are you kidding? Are you kidding? For this? A guy
who put us on the map WABC, Bob Grant. And
by the way, just a little bit of information in
the past. In nineteen seventy seven, Barry Farbath, the Great
Barry Farba, no longer with us, was the overnight host
(01:50):
here at wo R. He had just run against Bella
Abzick for Congress and had lost as a Conservative Republican.
And then he decided he was going to run for mayor,
as obviously I have twice. And in nineteen seventy seven
he was running against Ed Koch Mario Como. By the way, Andrew,
(02:15):
I knew your father, Mario. You know Mario Como. He
was on the Liberal party line. There was Barry Farber
on the conservative line, and Roy Goodman, who was the
Republican state Senator of the Upper east Side, the heir
to the x Lax fortune. He was a Rockefeller Liberal Republican.
They had twelve debates. Gay Pressman was the moderate of
(02:38):
twelve debates, and it was at Cotch who won. I
think Barry Farber got four percent and Roy Goodman got
about four percent. It was Cooch and Mariocomo who split
the rest of the votes. But it was a great
race to follow. So Barry Farber had left. Bob Grant
(02:59):
was the old host at WR that I listened to,
and then later on he was to return to WOR.
As I had mentioned when being fired by Bob Igar
of Disney and is he I had a substitute for
him for the first month. Uh, those fax machines didn't stop,
(03:20):
you know, it was like NonStop back then. The fax
machine would run you, Trader, why you there? Bob Grant
is your mentor you wouldn't be on talk radio WABC
without him. I said, exactly right, But this is the
business we have chosen. And if I got fired, Bob
(03:41):
Grant would say, why, I hope he lands on his feet,
and I knew he would. Those fax machines kept running
twenty four seven, three, six y five for like three
straight weeks with the most vile invectives that people could
scratch out and write out. And then of course there
was Barry Gray mid mornings. But I remember the personal
(04:04):
situation involving Barry Gray, who has missed a second Amendment
tough guy, but also he was the leader of those
that wanted to remove the horse drawn carriages from Central Park,
which I and my wife Nancy were in favor of,
and so many others. He was ahead of his time.
On the morning of June nineteenth, nineteen ninety two, on
(04:27):
my way to WABC to do the morning show Angels
in the Morning with my wife at the time, Lisa
now Lisa Ever's over at Channel five, I was shot
five times with hollow point bullets on the orders of
John Gotti Senior to John Gotti Junior and the Gambino
crime family. The guy Michael Ianatti was the guy who
shot me five times. He did twenty years for that.
(04:50):
But the interesting thing is, since I was being rushed
to Bellevue Hospital, they didn't know if I would live
or die. Lisa was on her way there, and my
producer at that time, Mike Thompson, took over the show,
and the first person to call in that morning was
very Gray, who had just finished the overnight said wor
(05:13):
concerned about what had happened to me. Weeks later, when
I came back on the air, the first caller into
the show was very great. I mean, these are the
men and in some cases women, like had mentioned Arlene
Francis Lynn Samuels over at WABC eclectic as she was.
(05:37):
They paved the way for all of us in talk radio,
and I will always honor that tradition because without them,
there would be no talk radio as we know it now,
or podcasts or all the other affiliated ways that you
can get your news, your information, your talk. And remember,
above any and all things, this is enter because if
(06:02):
it's not entertaining, you're not going to be listening. I guarantee.
But this is my homage to WOR because I've listened
to wr In fact, does anybody know is he? Where's
Eric Adams today? What country is he? In? His tax
payers expense? A man who got windned in pocket line,
the Swagerman with No Plant. There was a crooked mayor
(06:25):
many years ago. Bob Hope actually played him in the movie.
You should get that movie. It's absolutely incredible. Bob Hope
did a magnificent job playing the Swagerman with No Plan.
At that time with the Flappers during the time of
Speakeasy's Jimmy Walker, he had, like Eric Adams, about fifty
(06:46):
customized suits and he had ladies Galore, and FDR was
the governor who wanted to run for president on the
Democratic line, and he knew he had a problem because
Jimmy Walker was so hopelessly corrupt with the guidance of
Tammany Hall. And so he tells Jimmy Walker, you know,
(07:06):
I'm gonna have to use the power of the governorship
and fire you, which a governor can do. The governor
can fire the mayor. And Jimmy Walker understanding that his
days were numbered in that FDR needed to get Jimmy
Walker out of here so he could run for president
without having to also explain how that kind of corruption
(07:26):
could exist while FDR was the governor. You know what
Jimmy Walker did is he he took an ocean liner
with one of his gumatas one of his many females,
went to Paris, lived there for about ten years, came
back in the early forties, and you know what his
first job back was a talk show host here at wor.
(07:50):
You see, when you listen to me, you're gonna learn stuff.
You're gonna hear things that you probably wouldn't have heard
from other than March Simona himself more about radio than
any other person alive. Just to give you an idea.
I sat with Mark Simone early on in the campaign,
after I had announced for the Republican nomination, with my
(08:10):
very dear friend Paul Carlucci aka Johnny Legit at Nicolas
for three hours. We sat there. They were gonna give
me advice politically. We spoke for two and a half
hours about radio. That's all we talked about. That's the
love that Marc Simone has for radio. Poul Carlucci, who
at the time was the publisher of The New York Post.
(08:31):
Now actually he had already left that position, he had retired,
and yours truly imagine two and a half hours all
we talked about was radio. All we talked to because
that when you love radio, like so many of you do,
who listen to it morning, noon and night, you understand
what's good talk radio and you understand what's bad talk radio.
(08:53):
I need you all to do me a favor, though
when I run into you in the streets, which I
do quite often, so many people in so many places,
do not. Please, do not treat me like a gavon.
Do not tell me, oh, I voted for you, because
so far since the end of the campaign, and the
announcement of the results that zarround Mandami would be sworn
(09:13):
in as mayor on January first of this year. Everybody
comes up to me and says, I voted for you,
and then, being the Weisenheimer than I am, I do
a pivot in shift and I say, oh really, oh yeah,
my family voted for you too. Where you from? I'm
from Scarsdale? Ha ha, did you do that? He couldn't
vote for mayor. So don't tell me you voted for me,
(09:36):
because I will have to end up embarrassing you sometimes
in front of family and friends because you're trying to
pull my chain and chew my shorts. Don't do that.
If I had gotten every vote that people claimed that
they had cast on my behalf, I would have been
the mayor of the City of New York. So please,
(10:00):
let's get to the other key subject today. Give you
a little background information on what was a terrible loss
for the Republican Party nationally, the Republican Party in the
State of New York, and the Republican Party in the
City of New York, where we are extraordinarily weak. It says,
if we have been exposed to kryptonite by mostly Republicans.
(10:25):
Never mind the Democrats, by mostly Republicans, they go out
of their way to damage the brand and to damage
their candidates. You certainly saw that with me. Oh, vote
Ausle was a vote for Zoron, vote for Cmo. Yeah, Cromo,
who did that? President Donald Trump? Who did that? Elon Musk,
(10:46):
who did that? The billionaires, the masters of the universe
spent twenty million dollars doing that in the final weeks
of the campaign. But put me aside. We had a
star in the Republican Party who could touch Elise Stephanic.
Do you not remember when she was cross examining the
(11:12):
presidents of the Ivy League schools? Do you not remember?
You know? It was two years ago, December, two years ago,
one by one. First there was the Harvard president, Claudine Gay.
She knocked her out. Claudine Gay resigned after being cross
examined by Elise stefani. Number two was Elizabeth Magill University
(11:41):
of Pennsylvania. Knocked her out. She resigned right after that
interrogation by Elise Stefanik. The only one who suffered a
TKO at the hands of Elis Stefanic was Sally Kornbluth
of mit she somehow held on and what was it about?
It was simple. All that eleast Staphonic asked them is
(12:06):
would you call would you suggest that calling for genocide
of Jews violated the code of conduct at your university?
And they all did the chicken dance and said, well,
it depends on whether this was amazing. It depends on
(12:29):
whether your speech crossed into action. After that, they were
dead on arrival. But that was the first of many
cross examinations to come from what everyone realized was the
star of the Republican Party, tough, smart, young, think she's
(12:52):
a millennial and thinks she's like forty or forty one,
gave up a prestigious position as the US ambassador to
the United Nations. She would have been a clone of
Gene Kirkpatrick. Oh, we have a lot to talk about,
because there were so many other situations that were taking
(13:13):
place behind the scenes that none of you are aware of.
Why oh, why you saying to yourself, would at least
the phonic have dropped out on this late Friday. In
an election she had a real chance to win, and
really the only person who could have totally turned this
state around. You're not going anywhere You're going to keep
(13:33):
it right here on the dial. If you're just discovering
seven to ten Worr, this is your place to be.
Forget WABC always bashing Curtis and by the way, sinking
in the ratings, nobody giving them the kind of attention
that they were used to. But thank you, iHeart, thank
(13:53):
you Tom Cuddy, thank you WR for extending me this
microphone till January second, because I I'm gonna be blazing,
and I'm gonna be glazing some and I think, as
he most people would want to be glazed by Curtis Sleewer.
They would not want to be put on blast as
(14:14):
you've heard some of the people earlier today, right here
on your new place to be, seven to ten Wor.
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