Howard Stern to 2020 Democratic Candidates: “Consider Going on Fox News”

Howard Stern went deep into politics on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on Tuesday night.

On the CBS show to promote his book Howard Stern Comes Again, the iconic radio host floated the theory that Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 to get a raise for his work on The Apprentice, speculated that Hillary Clinton could have won the 2016 presidential election if she had appeared on his show and offered some advice to 2020 presidential candidates.

After a dynamic entrance onto Colbert’s show — Stern danced over to the house band and began singing a song about promoting his book to the audience — Stern and the late-night host recalled the former’s many interviews with Donald Trump on his New York radio show. Stern couldn’t recall how many times he interviewed Trump, but marveled, “He was wild, and I thought I was wild.”

Stern then offered Colbert his theory on the three times that the real-estate mogul has run for president, noting that the first two times Trump had a book to sell: Trump campaigned in order to sell more books, he argued. The third time, in 2016, “I really think he tried to run for president to get NBC to raise his salary [on The Apprentice],” Stern said. Stern later joked that if he had ever endorsed Trump, as he believed Trump wished him to, he would have sold out all his beliefs but “could potentially be the chief justice of the Supreme Court, or the head of the FCC…or at the very least, I could see that place they call Camp David.”

The radio host shared his belief that if the public saw Camp David, they would “revolt.” “I want to see Camp David — liberate it!” he shouted.

The radio host, an avid Hillary Clinton supporter, then recalled how he futilely chased an interview with Clinton before the 2016 election; she “would have been introduced to a new audience” if she had accepted, he said. Pressed by Colbert, Stern then said he thought an appearance on his show would have made a difference and helped her win. “I had a feeling that, in the same way I describe people like Lady Gaga or Sia, I have some hardcore dudes in my audience…basically, because she’s a woman, they don’t like her,” he said. “Amazingly after some of these interviews, and I’m very proud of this, they’re like, ‘Oh, I get her now.'”

When asked about the 2020 Democratic candidates, Stern said he wished to convey that Trump figured out how to communicate to a certain population with his show. “I think he used my show in a very effective way,” Stern said. Any Democrat who is considering running should “consider going on Fox News,” he concluded.

When asked about which Democrats he’d like to interview on his show, Stern admitted that Joe Biden had a “fascinating life.”

Bernie Sanders, however, was his “biggest hero.” When Stern was in one of his several snafus with the FCC a few decades ago, he recalled that the Vermont senator “got up in the Senate and said, [to the FCC], ‘I think what you’re doing to Howard Stern is wrong. I believe in freedom of speech.'”

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