The following is an excerpt fromHoward Stern Comes Again, the first book in over two decades fromHoward Stern.
Read on below.Howard Stern Comes Againpublishes Tuesday and isavailable for pre-order.
Instead of writing this book, I might have been sitting on the Supreme Court.
Credit: Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images; Craig Barritt/Getty Images
Think of the cosmic irony in that.
But I’m no sellout.
I have been a fan of Hillary for nearly as long as I’ve known Donald.
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She was a first lady, senator, secretary of state.
Her entire life has been in the service of our country.
I’d say, “No, I wanted her as president before I wanted Barack Obama.”
I love Barack Obama, but I was a Hillary Clinton supporter going all the way back to 2008.
I think she would have been a great president.
I saw long before anyone else that it wasn’t going to be easy for her to beat Donald.
I didn’t see her connecting.
My audience spans the entire country, including the swing states.
I know these people.
They’ve been listening to me my entire career.
I could tell that they were just not feeling Hillary and that they were really embracing Donald.
He just knows how to connect with an audience.
I was talking to my agent, Don Buchwald, about this.
Don immediately became obsessed with this idea.
We wanted to do whatever we could to make it happen.
This wasn’t the first time we set our sights on a Moby Dicktype interview subject.
In the early nineties, we tried to arrange an interview with Michael Jackson.
They had the idea of me organizing some kind of rally in his honor in New York.
Don and I got as far as meeting Michael at his manager’s Central Park apartment.
Michael walked in dressed in his full military getup and the tape on his nose.
We talked for about ten minutes.
I couldn’t stop staring at all the makeup on his face, which was practically dripping off.
He was like the Elephant Man.
After the meeting, we never heard from him again.
I knew I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up about Hillary.
I couldn’t help it.
I also thought my time onAGTmight have made me more palatable in her eyes.
Here I am at NBC."
Sure, a less fit and muscular Rocky.
I punch my own meat but not in a fridge.
Still, I was on top of my game.
Thinking about the Michael Jackson Super Bowl idea andAGT, Don and I wondered if TV was the answer.
Maybe Hillary would be more willing to do an interview on camera than on the radio.
There were a few big TV networks that had been after me to host an interview show.
It wouldn’t be a regular thing, just a few specials.
SiriusXM was cool with it, since it didn’t conflict with my radio show.
The head of one of these networks was a huge financial backer of Hillary.
Then you’ll get two specials."
It would’ve been easy to get Trump for an interview.
All throughout the campaign he had been reaching out to me.
He even asked me to speak at the Republican National Convention.
In my calculation, all I’d have to do is ask and he’d do it.
So this web link honcho presents the idea to Hillary.
And she says no.
This only makes Don more determined.
He’s got a lot of connections of his own in the Democratic Party.
Don went to them.
I wasn’t going to bring up Monica Lewinsky.
The old me would have tried that.
That would have been the first thing I said.
Now I see how that could only be viewed as an attack.
I wasn’t interested in that anyway.
The interview would have been, “Who are you as a person?
What makes you tick?
Talk to me about your life as a young girl.
What were your dreams?
When did you first realize you wanted to be in politics?”
I could have talked about her childhood for an hour.
I wanted to get to know her as a human being.
That Lewinsky stuff is pointless unless you get to know her first.
Hearing her talk about the disappointments in her life?
The audience would’ve fallen in love with her.
I’m telling you, I was obsessed with this.
I was Captain Ahab.
I wanted it more than anything.
I did all this research on her and discovered she liked gardening.
The basket was enormous.
There was all sorts of gardening crap in there, like packets of seeds.
I thought that might be coming on a little strong.
That’s not me.
I don’t beg.
What I did instead was agree to give an interview to theNew York Times.
They had contacted me a while before about doing a profile.
I hate doing interviews.
I hate being on the other side of the microphone.
I told Don to tell them yes.
The headline couldn’t have been more perfect: “Confessor.
What the Hell Happened to Howard Stern?”
Several celebrities were quoted saying what a great interviewer I was.
Surely this would reassure Hillary about talking to me.
I figured she reads theNew York Times.
Of course she does.
The article came out, and we heard nothing from her campaign.
Then Don remembered this writer at theWashington Postwho had been after him for a while about interviewing me.
A few days after theTimesstory, another one dropped in thePost.
If you look at that interview and theTimesstory, I’m basically telling her the plan.
She’d be in good hands.
She could trust me.
Again, we heard nothing from her.
Then I saw her in the debates.
Donald was shredding her.
He knew how to do this.
He was talking like a dude.
He was saying things in a clear and definite way.
People were digging it.
I don’t want to sound arrogant.
I don’t want to say that I could’ve tipped the election.
But how many votes did she actually lose by?
In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Floridaa couple thousand votes here, a couple thousand votes there.
We consider each of these to represent at least two people, since households often share a subscription.
Because I can’tmultiplication isn’t my strong suit.
But let’s just say that half are.
Would that not have done something?
I drive a truck.
I’m a contractor.
I’m a store owner.
Who knows what would have come out of our conversation.
Some little story that people could identify with.
Or, “I never listened to Sia.”
Or, “I always hated Rosie O’Donnell.”
And then they go, “But damn I love her now!”
To some people it wouldn’t have matteredwhatwe talked about.
Just the fact that she had the guts to show up might’ve done the trick.
So why didn’t she?
I’ll tell you why.
She thought it was a gamble.
In my mind, the gamble wasnotcoming on the show.
Had she done the show, it might’ve changed the election.
Becoming the first female president wasn’t the only thing Hillary missed out on.
She also missed out on one badass gardening basket.
I never sent it to her.
I divvied it up among my staff instead.
From HOWARD STERN COMES AGAIN by Howard Stern.
