Anthony Weiner to co-host radio show with Curtis Sliwa starting Saturday

NEW YORK — Anthony Weiner is hitting the airwaves — with a Guardian Angel.

Weiner, whose serial sexting scandals upended his promising political career and ultimately sent him to prison, will team up with Curtis Sliwa in a weekly two-hour radio show on WABC-AM starting on Saturday, the channel said.

Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and last year’s Republican mayoral nominee in New York City, said that the show will touch on sports, politics, and the publicly accessible penis pics that plunged Weiner’s career into chaos.

“He’s done talk radio — but that was right before he imploded completely,” Sliwa said of Weiner, a Democrat who was jailed in 2017 after prosecutors found he had sent sexually suggestive texts to a 15-year-old.

Weiner, 57, said he has a “very New York relationship” with Sliwa: They have long kept in touch privately, criticizing each other when they disagree. In 2016, they worked together on the radio briefly, when Sliwa’s co-host Ron Kuby was on a break.

The show is set to air on WABC-AM’s 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. slot on Saturdays. Sliwa said Friday morning that the show had come together within the last 72 hours and compared the concept to CNN’s long-running TV series “Crossfire,” describing it as classic right-left debate.

Weiner described himself as “nervous” about the show, noting that he is rusty as a speaker and does not follow politics as closely as he once did. “I’m kind of a reluctant hype man,” Weiner told the Daily News.

“Curtis is good at radio. He’s probably one taco short of a combo, but he’s good at this,” Weiner added. “It’s me that I’m not so sure of.”

Sliwa, a charismatic cat-loving character who once faked crimes to boost the Guardian Angels, was more bullish on the new project.

“Two Brooklyn boys: we know pretty much all the same people, so we know where the bones are buried and who buried them, on all angles,” Sliwa told The News.

“We’ll be discussing not only the politics of the city, which we know as well as anybody — from different perspectives,” Sliwa, 67, promised. “But also his own problems, the resurrection that he’s got to make.”

Weiner noted that the topic would be a “pretty weird elephant to leave in the room.”

Armed with a roaring mouth and an ability to get in front of cameras, Weiner was a rising political star representing Brooklyn in Congress when he posted an explicit image to Twitter in 2011.

Reaction was swift and harsh, and he resigned from New York’s 9th Congressional District seat in the House.

But his political career was not done, and Weiner returned to the arena in 2013 for an ill-fated run for City Hall. An early favorite, Weiner saw his chances diminish when new explicit images surfaced.

The tabloids made him a punching bag, but Weiner — who nicknamed himself Carlos Danger online — stuck the race out to the end. Bill de Blasio won, and went on to serve two terms as mayor.

Weiner ended his circus-like campaign by flipping off the press.

In 2017, Weiner pleaded guilty to sending obscene material to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, forcing him to register as a sex offender and landing him in federal prison.

When he was released from a halfway house in the Bronx in 2019, he said he hoped “to be able to live a life of integrity and service.”

“I’m glad this chapter of my life is behind me,” Weiner said then.

Weiner’s internet activity left a trail of political carnage: Emails found on his laptop in an investigation of his digital sexscapades led James Comey, then the FBI director, to reopen an investigation of Hillary Clinton that cast a shadow on her 2016 White House bid.

Huma Abedin, a top aide to Clinton, was Weiner’s wife, having stuck with him through his doomed mayoral attempt and his Congressional resignation. The pair ultimately split.

He has made few public comments since serving time in jail, although he spoke to The New York Times in the spring about the Democratic mayoral primary, saying he was surprised at how “relatively undisciplined” the candidates were.

On Friday, Weiner said he was “really high” on the ultimate winner, Mayor Eric Adams, and that he ranked the mayor first on his ballot.

“He is being generous with people that don’t have perfect backgrounds,” Weiner said of Adams, who was in a gang in his youth. “I just really admire him.”

Sliwa said Weiner — who recently spent 14 months at the helm of a company crafting countertops from cement and beer bottles — deserves a second chance. The show figures to raise eyebrows, but it could also make for inimitable listening.

“We’re in an era now where we believe in redemption,” Sliwa said, noting that Weiner first declined to do a show when the idea was raised a year ago. “Give the guy a chance. The guy’s good. He can do talk radio. He’s listened to talk radio. Why not give him a shot?”

Weiner said he has tried to commit himself to service over the last three years, volunteering at food pantries and working to help other former convicts find jobs.

He said he is attempting to fulfill the pledge he made when he was released in 2019.

“I’ve lived a much smaller life,” said Weiner, who lives in Manhattan. “Three years ago, I was behind bars. Four years ago, I was in rehab and my life had exploded, and I had dishonored my wife and let down my constituents. So every day is fine compared to that.”

———