Joe Gorga is getting real about that heated argument with Gia Giudice.
The relatives made headlines in February after their tense exchange about Joe Giudice aired on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. And during his guest appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on March 1, Joe addressed those, as Andy Cohen put it, "tough conversations" with his niece, providing extra context.
"I never really speak about Joe Giudice, ever, you know?" he said during his guest appearance on the late-night show alongside Melissa Gorga. "And there's a ton of articles about me with him, about my wife and I, and I wonder if they ever yell at him for anything. If you go out and look, there are 11 articles, I've never said anything."
"Before that day, my sister's telling me they're going through a divorce, and she's telling me all these things that he was saying to her," Joe continued (Teresa Giudice's divorce from her ex was finalized in September 2020). "So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about all this. And then we had that episode a couple days later, so I explode. That's my sister I'm trying to protect her."
Melissa then added, "I think people forget sometimes that we also have three kids who don't want to read anything that he writes about our children either."
In the Feb. 8 episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Gia and Joe had a tense exchange at Teresa's pool party. After Margaret Josephs and Jennifer Aydin got into their own argument over Margaret bringing up an affair Jennifer's husband Bill Aydin had years ago, Gia told Teresa, "People get hurt and people get offended by things that other people say but this is why people just shouldn't open their mouth in the first place, just like dad didn't deserve it either. It's not right."
And Joe, who was sitting nearby, heard the comment and got upset. Gia told Joe she wasn't going to talk to him if he was "going to come at me disrespectfully."
"I'm an adult now too so you can talk to me like one because I'm done with you being disrespectful," she told him. "You're not going to talk down to me either."
Joe then told his niece he "would never allow my daughter to talk to my aunt or my uncles" like this and stormed off. When Gia went over to talk to Joe, he expressed how he felt disrespected and "got aggravated."
"Here's my problem," he said. "I've been dealing with this for 20 years. I don't want to feel like this devil of a man for doing what? I stuck up for my sister. I stuck up for my parents."
After Joe brought up his late parents, Gia walked away. "I'm not telling Gia not to love your father," Joe said in a confessional. "No love your father, but he has done things to hurt this family and I'm not going to hold that in for the rest of my life."
Later, Gia returned to talk things out again. "You have every right if you wanna be mad at my father for putting my mom in jail. You don't think he's mad at himself? He lives with it every day. He's not even in this country," Gia said. (Teresa and her ex-husband Joe both spent time in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges and he was deported to Italy). "But it comes to a point where the bashing's too much."
Joe later apologized during a family discussion on the Feb. 15 episode. "Tonight, for the first time, I understand," he said. "I know I have been hanging on to this anger with my nieces' father."
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