- Jimmy Kimmel slammed Fox executives for booking Rudy Giuliani on the reality show "The Masked Singer."
- Deadline reported Giuliani was unmasked during a taping, prompting judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to walk off set.
Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday slammed Fox executives for booking Rudy Giuliani on an upcoming season of "The Masked Singer," calling the popular reality show "garbage."
"The new season doesn't premiere until next month, but one of the identities of the singers has been revealed, and his name is Rudy Giuliani," Kimmel said during a monologue on his eponymous ABC late-night show, prompting boos from the audience.
"The guy who's trying to destroy our country, he's singing on a show," Kimmel added. "Fox network should be ashamed of itself."
Deadline reported Wednesday that Giuliani is a contestant on an upcoming episode of the show, which features celebrities singing songs while donning elaborate costumes that conceal their identifies; judges and the audience then vote and the least popular character is eliminated and revealed.
Giuliani, who had his law licenses in New York and D.C. suspended for spreading false claims about election fraud, was unmasked during a taping of the show, which made two of the show's judges — actor Ken Jeong and singer Robin Thicke — walk off the set, the outlet reported. Per Deadline, judges Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger remained on set and "bantered" with Giuliani.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another polarizing Republican figure, was a contestant on "The Masked Singer" in 2020, which prompted similar backlash online but the none of the judges walked off.
According to Deadline, the theme of the upcoming season is "The Good, The Bad and The Cuddly." While Kimmel said Fox is not releasing information about which mask Giuliani will don in the new season, he quipped that the former attorney to President Donald Trump is hiding behind the green, monster-looking costume.
"How does this even happen?" Kimmel asked. "I mean, a lot of people at Fox had to sign off on this. Not one of them was like, 'Hey, maybe we shouldn't have the guy who is under investigation for helping to plot an insurrection singing on our show.'"
"Why did Rudy even do this? Did he think he was going to the Masked Singer Landscaping Company?" Kimmel joked, referencing the now-infamous press conference he hosted at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Pennsylvania during the presidential campaign 2020.
"Only Rudy Giuliani would try to overthrow the government, break wind loudly in court, sweat hair dye all over one press conference, have another one next to a dildo store, and then try to rehabilitate his image by singing 'Shake Your Groove Thing' dressed as a pineapple."
The New York Times reported on January 31 that Giuliani, at the direction of President Donald Trump, called the Department of Homeland Security's acting deputy secretary six weeks after election day 2020 to ask if it could legally take control of voting machines located in critical swing states.
The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed Giuliani on January 18, The New York Times reported.
He was subpoenaed alongside three others who "advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes," committee chairman and Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson said in a statement.
Kimmel wasn't the only late-night host to dig into Giuliani's reported appearance on "The Masked Singer."
"That's right, the criminal goon that we know for a fact is being investigated for trying to overthrow our democracy for his idiot emperor was yukking it up on a reality show. There hasn't been anything this shocking since Lee Harvey Oswald made a guest appearance on 'Gilligan's Island,'" Stephen Colbert said in his monologue on Thursday's episode of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."
Trevor Noah also criticized the casting during "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah."
"America is truly, truly truly truly, the greatest country on earth. Because this is the only place in the world where