Teresa Giudice's daughter Gia addresses backlash over plea for President Trump to pardon dad Joe
The media personality, 24, shared a video on the Fourth of July to ask the current president to allow her dad back into the U.S. - after he was deported in 2019 to his home country of Italy following his fraud conviction.
Gia's clip came amid Joe's own pleas in recent months and shortly after Trump pardoned both Todd and Julie Chrisley in May after the pair served prison time for tax evasion and bank fraud.
However, the daughter of Teresa and Joe Giudice garnered criticism for the timing of her video - with some calling her out for posting it amid the ongoing ICE raids and others labeling it 'privilege at it's finest.'
While making an appearance at the Next Gen event in NYC on Wednesday, Gia admitted that she 'felt so bad' for when she uploaded the reel and also offered an apology.
'I apologize for posting that on the Fourth of July,' the star told People. 'I got so much c**p for that. I felt so bad.'
She explained that she filmed the plea the day before the holiday and said she 'didn't want to let my dad down because I told him that the video was done.
'And when I tell him things, he expects it - like, you know, an Italian household, it better be done the next day. It better be done right away.'
The following day on the Fourth of July, she chose to post the clip not long after she woke up in the morning.
Gia recalled the comment section quickly filling up and directly addressed some that called her 'privileged.'
'And I'm not privileged, I'm not entitled. The first thing on my mind that morning was just getting a point across and not disappointing my dad. That was really it.'
The star then expressed that she felt like she couldn't take down the clip due to the criticism because it 'also just looked bad.'
Gia continued, 'That's why you always have to be cautious when you post and what you post and the time of day. But I did feel really bad about that, but I'm also happy that the message is getting out there.'
She reflected on being in the public eye - and its affect amid her mom Teresa and dad Joe's divorce and their prison sentences back in 2014.
'You just always try to do the right thing, but you're always going to be, I guess, judged from your parents' actions or things that they've done in the past.'
The clip she posted on the Fourth of July holiday was captioned with, 'let's bring Joe Giudice; my father home together♥️ #bringjoehome.' Gia also tagged Trump as well as the White House and her father.
The reel showed the TV personality writing a letter to President Trump and then going to a post office to send it.
Over 10 years earlier, Teresa and Joe Giudice were both sentenced to prison after they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud as well as three types of bankruptcy fraud.
The RHONJ star served 11 months behind bars and Joe was deported back to his home country of Italy and currently resides in the Bahamas.
During the course of the clip, Gia could be heard saying: 'Hi guys, my name is Gia Giudice. I'm the daughter of Joe Giudice and today I'm using my voice for something deeply personal.
'My dad was deported over four years ago. Since then, our family has lived in an emotional limbo. No matter how strong we try to be, the absence of a father, of a parent, it's something that never stops hurting.'
She added, 'Growing up, my dad was present at every cheer competition, every dance recital, holiday. He was our provider, our protector, and he still is, just now from thousands of miles away.
'My dad was deported over four years ago. Since then, our family has lived in an emotional limbo. No matter how strong we try to be, the absence of a father, of a parent, it's something that never stops hurting,' Gia said
'Watching the Chrisley family receive a second chance inspired me. It showed me that people can be forgiven, that families can be restored and that sometimes the justice system has room for grace.'
In May, Todd and Julie Chrisley were notably released from prison just one day after Trump pardoned the pair.
Back in 2022, the pair were found guilty of defrauding banks out of $30 million. Julie was sentenced to seven years in prison - which she had been serving in the state of Kentucky.
Her husband Todd was sentenced to 12 years and had been serving his own sentence in Florida.
Gia said, 'That gave me hope. Hope that maybe my dad could come home too. A pardon would mean more than just legal forgiveness.
'It would mean healing for my sisters, for my mom, for my family, and for me. We've missed birthdays, graduations, even the small moments that matter the most.'
She further expressed, 'This isn't just about one man. It's about a family who deserves to be whole again. I'm using my platform to speak not just as a public figure, but as a daughter who deeply misses her dad.
'We are not asking for sympathy, we're asking for a second chance. So, let's bring Joe home together. President Donald J. Trump, I really hope you receive these character letters about my dad Joe Giudice.'
Not long after she uploaded the post, the comment section was filled with both criticism and positive messages.
One penned, 'He didn't pay his taxes. He broke the law and then was living here illegally. The Nerve of privilege.'
Another wrote, 'Are you currently aware of whats going on with immigration at the moment in this country? Smh.'
'This is rather tone deaf considering your father committed a white collar crime and got deported but people are getting deported and sent God Knows Where without even having criminal records,' a fan shared.
'Your fans want you to use your influence to help the less fortunate and I don't blame anyone for not having sympathy for your father who is dealing with consequences based off of choices he MADE,' they added.
Gia also garnered support from others, such as her mom Teresa who shared red heart emojis and Savannah Chrisley who typed, 'I'm so proud of you.'
One commented, 'Get out of her comments with the negativity it's her Father for goodness sake.'
'This is the love of a daughter fighting for her dad and no matter anyone's opinion she has the right to forgive his mistakes and try to being him home,' another penned.
Joe has also been sharing his own pleas on social media and last month in June, also shared a direct post which he tagged President Trump in.
'I know I made mistakes - but I did my time. And my family has done the time with me ever since. It's been almost ten years since I've been able to stand next to my girls in the U.S.'
He added, 'All I want is the chance to come back home, hug my daughters, and be there for the little things dads are supposed to be there for.
'Mr. President, if you see this, I hope you hear me. I'm just asking for a second chance to be the father I promised to be. @realdonaldtrump. Thanks to everyone who's supporting me - you give me hope every day.'
Joe shares four children with ex-wife Teresa: Gia, 24, Gabriella, 20, Milania, 19, and Audriana, 15.
Earlier this week on Saturday, he shared another post about wanting a second chance after 'already missing too much.'
He wrote, 'I know I made mistakes - but I did my time. And my family has done the time with me ever since. It's been almost ten years since I've been able to stand next to my girls in the U.S.'
He shared, 'Every father deserves to stand beside his daughters. I've already missed too much. Things like birthdays, graduations, even just simple dinners like this.
'Moments like these aren't guaranteed, and I'm fighting every day to be there for more of them. Thank you for sharing our story and keeping hope alive. One post, one share, one prayer at a time - we're getting closer.'
In the snap accompanied with his message, Joe could be seen flashing a cheerful smile while surrounded by his four daughters.
RHONJY alum Siggy Flicker - who was appointed by Trump to be on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council - has since commented that she is doing her best to help. 'I'm trying. Joe should be back home with his beautiful daughters!!!!!!'
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Times
10 minutes ago
- Times
Tom Lehrer obituary: devilish musical satirist
Before Tom Lehrer opened his mouth, he seemed the image of decency. Sitting at the piano in a tux as sharp as his jawline, looking a little nerdy with his slicked-back hair, large-framed glasses and bow tie, he could have fooled his listeners into thinking that they were about to hear a mild selection of show tunes. Yet as soon as his fingers hit the keys he revealed himself as the imp he really was, gleefully mocking staid mid-century morals, goading his listeners to clutch their pearls. He sang The Masochism Tango, exclaiming that 'I ache for the touch of your lips, dear/ But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.' And he sang about that bucolic way to spend a Sunday afternoon: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. In I Got It From Agnes, he sang about the transmission of 'it', a venereal disease, through a series of increasingly depraved couplings. Masterfully avoiding recourse to a single rude word, he made eyes bulge with tell of how 'Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/ She got it from her daddy who just gives her everything/ She then gave it to Daniel, whose spaniel has it now/ Our dentist even got it and we're still wondering how.' He won renown among those of discerning bad taste in the Fifties and early Sixties for 37 such songs. They also included I Hold Your Hand In Mine — the seemingly sweet murmurs of a lover who has in fact murdered his darling and kept her hand as a souvenir — and When You are Old and Gray, in which, inverting Yeats's poem, he pleaded: 'So say you love me here and now, I'll make the most of that/ Say you love and trust me, for I know you'll disgust me, when you're old and getting fat.' He sang such lyrics with blithe zest and remarkable vocal dexterity, wending his way through the most tangled tongue-twisters. As if to prove a point, he arranged all the known elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Major General's Song. Part of the joy of listening to him sing was the thrill of hearing him vault such high hurdles as 'Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium/ And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium/ And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium/ And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.' Lehrer was such a confident performer that his songs could seem like spontaneous outbursts, but really he laboured over them intently, shaving off spare words and notes until they were as elegant as equations. A Harvard mathematician who retreated from the limelight back to his alma mater, he found the same satisfaction in fitting a satirical message into verse as he did in solving such abstruse mathematical problems as 'the number of locally maximal elements in a random sample'. Many of his songs originated as party pieces to play to his friends at Harvard, where he matriculated in 1943 at only 15. He made a record of a dozen of his songs to give to them as a memento, hoping to sell the rest of the 400 copies at gigs. Having managed to sell them in a couple of days, he printed more, and employed freshmen to help him to dispatch them by mail order. His fame spread by word of mouth, and by 1954 he had sold 10,000 records. He also began playing in nightclubs such as The Blue Angel in Manhattan and the Hungry I in San Francisco, and at benefits for liberal and anti-war groups. A left-winger of the strait-laced sort who would soon be drowned out by the hippy movement, he endeared himself to his comrades with an 'uplifting song in the tradition of the great old revival hymns' about nuclear annihilation. It went: 'We will all go together when we go/ What a comforting fact that is to know/ Universal bereavement, an inspiring achievement/ Yes we will all go together when we go.' By 1957 he was performing at Carnegie Hall. Lehrer's fame reached Britain that year, when Professor JR Sutherland, awarding an honorary music degree to Princess Margaret from the University of London, let it be known that she was a fan of his music. Talk of his songs spread through university papers and record shops, prompting the BBC to ban most of them from the airwaves the following year. In 1959 he recorded a second album, More of Tom Lehrer, and sold out several venues in the United Kingdom. Yet it was at this moment that he began to tell his friends he wanted to stop performing. He had never gone out of his way to seek fame. At Harvard, once inundated with invitations to perform at parties, he had doubled his fee. The number of invitations halved, which suited him just fine. At the end of 1959, having toured Australia, and the UK once more, he decided to let his records earn his living for him, and return to Harvard to try to finish his PhD. He soon concluded, however, that he had nothing original to offer academia, and gave up on the PhD in 1965. He continued to dabble with songwriting, submitting tapes of his music to That Was the Week That Was — a precursor to Saturday Night Live — and releasing a third album, That Was the Year That Was. But it tired him to tour the world, playing the same songs over and over, and he all but gave it up. On a short tour of Scandinavia in 1967 he joked that all of his songs were 'part of a huge scientific project to which I have devoted my entire life, namely, the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits', but it seemed that experiment had reached its conclusion. It was not only out of weariness that he retreated from the limelight, but out of a sense that popular culture had left him behind. His brand of dissent — droll, insouciant, recognisably an undergraduate parlour game — seemed an anachronism to the earnest and righteous rebels of the counterculture. About them he joked, 'It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things everybody else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.' Contrary to a biographical note on one of his LPs, Thomas Andrew Lehrer was not 'raised by a yak, by whom he was always treated as one of the family', but born in Manhattan in 1928, the son of Morris Lehrer, a non-practising Jew and necktie manufacturer whose Gilbert and Sullivan records he would listen to constantly, and Anna (née Waller). He began piano lessons at the age of eight, and spent the summers of his boyhood at Camp Androscoggin in Maine, where he bumped into a younger boy whose music he would later idolise: Stephen Sondheim (obituary, November 27, 2021). Educated at Horace Mann, a private high school in the Bronx, Lehrer skipped three years to keep himself amused. His application to Harvard took the form of a poem, the last stanza of which ran: 'But although I detest/ Learning poems and the rest/ Of the things one must know to have 'culture',/ While each of my teachers/ Makes speeches like preachers/ And preys on my faults like a vulture/ I will leave movie thrillers/ And watch caterpillars/ Get born and pupated and larva'ed/ And I'll work like a slave/ And always behave/ And maybe I'll get into Harvard.' He chose to study mathematics, judging that English involved too much reading and chemistry too much grubbing around in foul-smelling laboratories. 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He died on July 27, 2025, aged 97
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Daily Mail
10 minutes ago
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