Howard Stern made it clear that his interview with President Joe Biden, which aired on April 26, was not rehearsed.
“You’ve gotta f------- be kidding me! First of all, we controlled all the audio,” he said when responding to social media conspiracies that the president, 81, wore an earpiece during the hour-plus interview. “My whole goal was not to sit there and talk politics. I’m not into that. I don’t want to debate policy."
“My only agenda [was] I would like to get to know the president because I suspect he’s a very meaningful, very thoughtful guy,” he added.
Stern, 70, also brought up how airlines will have to offer refunds than credits for canceled flights, which people thought the White House made him say.
“Here’s what happened. When Joe Biden came in, the day before [producer] John Hein and I were talking about some of the accomplishments that we admire that have gone on in the past four years, and John says to me, ‘Hey, Howard, did you hear what Joe Biden did with the airlines?'” Stern said.
“If they were scripting the questions, wouldn’t that have been a lot different?” Stern co-host Robin Quivers asked.
“Oh yeah, but as far as the statement about the airline… cut the conspiracy theory,” he replied.
During the interview, Biden admitted he would be open to hashing things out with Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
"I am somewhere," the president said. "I don't know when. I'm happy to debate him."
Biden also got candid about what he went through after his first wife, Neilia Biden, and their infant daughter died in a car crash in 1972.
“You don’t have to be crazy to commit suicide. If you’ve been to the top of the mountain, you think it’s never going to be there again,” he shared. “In just a brief moment, I thought about going to the Delaware Memorial [Bridge] and jump.”
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“I had two kids,” he added. “It wasn’t like I got to commit suicide. It was like I had been to the top of the mountain and it’s never going to happen again. You’re never going to be OK.”
