Vito Fossella stars in pro-Trump cable show

Former Brooklyn congressman is co-host of ‘Table Talk’

January 18, 2017 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Vito Fossella exits the Alexandria General Court after his sentencing for drunk driving in Alexandria, Va., on Dec. 8, 2008. Fossella was sentenced to five days in jail, a humiliating coda to a political career ruined by revelations he'd fathered a child from an extramarital affair. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Vito Fossella exits the Alexandria General Court after his sentencing for drunk driving in Alexandria, Va., on Dec. 8, 2008. Fossella was sentenced to five days in jail, a humiliating coda to a political career ruined by revelations he'd fathered a child from an extramarital affair. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

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President-elect Donald Trump is getting help bolstering his image from a former member of Congress who left office nine years ago under a cloud of scandal.

Vito Fossella, a former Republican congressmember who represented a Southwest Brooklyn-Staten Island district for six terms, is the co-host of “Table Talk,” a show on Newsmax TV.

The show, which Fossella co-hosts with Wall Street entrepreneur John Tabacco, presents a different group of Trump supporters each week seated around a dinner table talking about why they are in the President-elect’s corner. “Let’s give these folks a chance to tell their story,” Fossella told the New York Post.

Fossella left his job at Park Strategies, a Park Avenue consulting firm founded by former U.S. senator Al D’Amato, to take the cable show gig, the Post reported.

Fossella, who was first elected to the House in a special election in 1997, opted not to run for re-election in 2008 following sordid revelations that came out about his personal life.

His fall from grace was sudden and swift. It started with a drunk driving arrest.

On May 1, 2008, Fossella was arrested on a drunk driving charge in Alexandria, Virginia. In the wake of that arrest, it was revealed that Fossella, who was married, was involved in a long-term affair with Laura Fay, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, and that the two had a three-year-old daughter together.

Fossella announced on May 20, 2008 that he would finish out the remainder of his term in Congress but would not run for re-election that year.

Democrat Michael McMahon won election to the congressional seat in November 2008. He was defeated two years later by Republican Michael Grimm. McMahon is now the district attorney of Staten Island.

Grimm was also caught up in a scandal in 2014. He was arrested on a federal tax fraud charge and pleaded guilty. He resigned from Congress in January 2015. Republican Dan Donovan won a special election for the seat in May of 2015 and won re-election in November 2016.

An article on the Newsmax website described “Table Talk” as a “new political reality show” featuring “straight talk from the people of America.”

Fossella and Tabacco will travel each week to the heartland of America to sit down to dinner with families and listen to what Americans are saying, according to Newsmax.

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