Howard Stern Says Replaying Trump Tapes Would Be 'A Betrayal'

Don’t expect Howard Stern to be airing any old interviews with Donald Trump in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” hot-mic leak.

“Why don’t I play all the tapes? I have to tell you why: I feel Donald Trump did the show in an effort to be entertaining and have fun with us and I feel like it would be a betrayal to any of our guests if I sat there and played them now where people are attacking him,” the SiriusXM host said during his show Monday morning. 

The interviews weren’t conducted to “fuck someone over ... we were having a good time. I fully knew what I was doing when I interviewed Trump. I knew I had a guy who loved to talk about sex ... I had a guy who loved to evaluate women on a scale of 1 to 10. These are avenues I went down because I knew it would entertain the audience.”

Stern has had Trump on as a guest numerous times over the past 16 years, and considers him a friend. In the past, the Republican presidential nominee has discussed things like why “deeply troubled women” are “great in bed” and not having “gay thoughts” on the show.

One thing Stern has not heard is the “locker room talk” Trump referred to while defending his lewd “Access Hollywood” comments that alluded to sexual assault. 

“This idea of ‘locker room talk’... all the times I’ve been around guys ― and, believe me, when I’m around guys 85 percent of the times you’re talking about pussy ― but I have never been in the room when someone has said ‘grab them by the pussy,” Stern said. “No one’s ever advocated going that step where you get a little bit, ‘Hey I’m going to invade someone’s space.’ ... A lot of [locker room talk is] real kind of desperate talk. The reason it’s in a locker room is because no one’s proud of it.”

For the record, Stern is voting for Hillary Clinton. 

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.