Few people have spoken for as long—or as candidly—with Donald Trump, and still considered him a friend, as radio host Howard Stern. Stern has hosted the mogul-turned-bankrupt-mogul-turned-mogul-again-turned-reality-show-star-turned-president a number of times on his show over the last 17 years, often talking about exactly the sorts of things you’d expect two such sides of the national id to discuss. (Politics, foreign policy, the status of Trump’s daughter Ivanka as “a piece of ass.”) Today, though, Stern opened up on his show on his thoughts on Trump’s presidency, the motivations behind it, and the reasons he thinks it’ll be terrible for his friend.
“I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved,” Stern said. “He wants people to cheer for him,” he added, while noting how out-of-character Trump’s stances on abortion and politics, and his recent turn against the press has been. “First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. It’s not good for him. It’s not good. There’s a reason every president who leaves the office has grey hair.” And while “Donald Trump” is fairly low on our list of people to worry about being harmed by the Trump presidency, Stern does suggest a pretty believable reason for some of Trump’s Twitter-preening and lashing out at critics. (He also pushes the “he didn’t mean to win” idea, suggesting the entire campaign was a negotiating tactic with NBC, which is either naive, or depressing, or both, depending on how good a read you think Stern has of his old buddy Trump.)
[via CNN]