Donald Trump Says He Knows Exactly When Howard Stern Lost His Audience

Now that nemesis Stephen Colbert has been vanquished, a reporter asked Donald Trump about this week’s news that SiriusXM may be parting ways with Howard Stern after the shock jock’s massive contract ends this fall. 

Howard Stern, Howard Stern… Oh yeah, his old friend Howard Stern! Trump remembers that guy. “I used to do his show, used to have fun, but I haven't heard that name in a long time,” he said during a press conference. It was the first time Trump had heard the rumors that Stern might be leaving satellite radio, but he wasn’t surprised.

“You know when he went down?” 

“When you won?” the reporter guessed.

“No, before,” Trump corrected. “When he endorsed Hillary Clinton, he lost his audience. People said, ‘Give me a break.’ He went down when he endorsed Hillary Clinton.”

Trump was a favorite guest on Stern’s show before the two fell out. The men even attended each other’s weddings. “Donald Trump, hands down, whenever you put him on the air — now this is before he was running for president — he was an open book,” Stern told ABC News in 2019. “He would say anything. This is why he was great. There was no filter.”

That affection changed after Trump was elected to his first term. “I hate the people who vote for (Trump),” Stern said last September in the months leading up to the 2024 election. “I think they’re stupid. I do. I’ll be honest with you, I have no respect for you.”

If Stern really is out — he showed up at Sirius unexpectedly yesterday and did a live show with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, with no mention of retirement — the reporter wondered if the departure represented the latest failure of the “Hate Trump” business model.

“Well, it hasn’t worked, and it hasn’t worked really for a long time,” said the president. “And I would say pretty much from the beginning.”

If that’s true, you can guess who Trump believes will be the next guys on the unemployment line. “Fallon has no talent. Kimmel has no talent. They’re next,” he predicted, a forecast he’s repeated several times in recent weeks. “They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going. I don’t know. But I would imagine because, you know, Colbert has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon.”

Despite those ratings, Trump couldn’t resist kicking The Late Show host when he was down. “Colbert has no talent,” he said. “I mean, I could take anybody here. I could go outside in the beautiful streets and pick a couple of people that would do just as well or better. They’d get higher ratings than he did. He’s got no talent.”

Some guys would rather talk about anything rather than the Epstein files.