Donald Trump is “an unserious man” and a “sore loser” who aspires to dictatorship, Vice President Kamala Harris warned the satellite radio host Howard Stern in a Tuesday afternoon appearance.
“Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator,” Harris said. “He admires strongmen. And he gets played by them, because he thinks that they’re his friends.”
Harris made the comments on Stern’s Sirius XM show as part of a breakneck media blitz that has also included recent stops on the podcast Call Her Daddy, CBS News’ 60 Minutes and The View. The wide-ranging, sympathetic interview with Stern—in which the former shock jock unequivocally pledged his vote to Harris—covered topics from abortion and election denial to Harris’ preferred breakfast cereals (Raisin Bran and Special K) and typical morning workout routine (30 minutes on the elliptical machine).
The two also returned repeatedly to the subject of Trump’s character, which Stern knows firsthand as a former friend and fellow traveler of the 45th president. “How could anyone justify any of this? I don’t get it, it’s madness,” Stern said of Trump’s behavior. “And I’ve known Donald Trump for so many years—he was at my wedding and I always had a good time with him. But not as president of the United States.”
Stern has repeatedly pilloried Trump over his handling of issues including abortion and the Covid-19 pandemic, both of which cropped up in his conversation with Harris. Of abortion, Harris said, Trump “hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court to do exactly what they did: Take away the right of an individual to make decisions about their own body.”
The pair also discussed a damning new report on Trump’s relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward, secretly sent Covid-19 test machines to Putin during the pandemic and has had private conversations with the Russian dictator as recently as this spring. (The Trump campaign has said the book contains “made up stories.”)
Trump “admires dictators,” Harris said, and has promised “to be a dictator on day one.” Stern asked Harris if she would feel safe remaining in the US should Trump win; Harris dodged the question, saying instead that she is “doing everything I can” to win the election.
But that battle has grown “surreal,” the vice president acknowledged, as her opponent continues to veer into conspiracies and untruths. Harris described feeling a sense of unreality during her September 10 debate with Trump, when the former president spouted a baseless internet rumor about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs. “This was a very serious moment to earn the votes of the American people,” she said. “And he was talking about things that were factually untrue and quite ridiculous.”
The unscripted, hour-long appearance with Stern represented something of a deviation for Harris, who has historically kept the press at arm’s length and has sat for only three TV interviews in the month of September. She plans to do twice as many in the first week and a half of October, according to the Washington Post, which on Monday reported that Harris’ sudden media blitz was designed to engage voting blocs that haven’t fully embraced the vice president.
To that end, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have hit a series of podcasts and other digital media ventures that don’t typically make the campaign circuit, including Call Her Daddy, All the Smoke, and SmartLess. Call Her Daddy is the single most popular podcast among women in the US; All the Smoke is a sports podcast aimed at Black men, and SmartLess is a comedy podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.
Trump and his running mate, meanwhile, have appeared on podcasts hosted by influencers like YouTuber Logan Paul and stand-up comedian Theo Von. The former president also appears to be keeping abreast of his opponents’ press appearances.
“Lyin’ Kamala … is being exposed as a ‘dummy’ every time she does a show,” Trump wrote Tuesday afternoon on Truth Social.
