How Trump Made Howard Stern 'Sort of a Journalist'

Howard Stern is one of our greatest living interviewers, offering the profession a rare blend of candor and irreverence. But he apparently never considered himself a real “journalist” — or, at least, not until Donald Trump’s presidential run led to people digging up the GOP leader’s often salacious and disturbing quotes from The Howard Stern Show.

“When Trump actually started to win, I never would have imagined that I’d see newscasters quoting my show like it was the Bible. It was just so weird,” Stern said on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, alluding to the numerous times Trump appeared on his radio program from the early Nineties through 2015.

“And they were bringing up my name in the debates and all this other stuff. And it was kinda surreal. And then I said to myself, ‘Well, maybe I’m sort of a journalist.’ Journalism comes in strange places. I had all this wealth of material with Donald Trump, who, by the way, was the best radio guest ever because he would just say things that no one on the planet would say. And he’s still saying it!”

In recent interviews promoting his latest book, Howard Stern Comes Again, Stern has frequently cited Trump’s appeal as an interview guest — at least in his pre-politics days. In a recent New York Times piece, he called Trump a “fantastic” interview, “as unguarded as any human being that has ever been on my show.” But after Trump’s campaign began, “he became one of the worst radio guests.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/donald-trump-howard-stern-jimmy-kimmel-interview-897298/