What did the original 2005 Howard Stern interview actually say about Trump going backstage at pageants?
Executive summary
The 2005 Howard Stern interview contains an on-record passage in which Donald Trump says he would "go backstage" at beauty pageants while contestants were "getting dressed," and that, as the pageant owner, he was "allowed" to be there to "inspect" [1]. Multiple fact-checkers and contemporary news reports confirm he spoke about Miss Universe/Miss USA contexts and did not, in the original audio, explicitly say he was referring to Miss Teen USA or to contestants under 18 [2] [3].
1. What Trump actually said on the tape
In the April 2005 Stern exchange, after being asked whether he ever had sex with pageant contestants, Trump deflected and then recounted going "backstage before a show" where "everyone's getting dressed and ready" and "no men are anywhere," adding that he was "allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it" [1]. That phrasing — backstage, contestants undressed, owner inspecting — is present in the audio transcript and was reported by CNN and other outlets when the recordings surfaced [4] [1].
2. What the quote did not say: the teen-pageant claim
Credible fact‑checks note a crucial absence in the original remark: Trump did not explicitly reference "Miss Teen USA" or say he was watching teenage contestants change [2] [3]. Full Fact and PolitiFact both flagged social posts that edited or reattributed his words to claim he boasted about entering Miss Teen USA dressing rooms with girls aged 14–16, calling those versions misleading because the Stern quote concerned Miss Universe/Miss USA contexts where competitors are adults [2] [3].
3. How reporting and witnesses complicated the record
That factual distinction has been complicated by contemporaneous and later reporting: in 2016 BuzzFeed published allegations from former Miss Teen USA contestants who said Trump had entered their dressing room in the 1990s when some competitors were minors, and outlets picked up those claims alongside the Stern audio [5]. News organizations including The Independent, The Hill and Rolling Stone reported both the Stern brag and the accusations from former contestants, juxtaposing the tape with their allegations that his access to pageants created situations that made young contestants uncomfortable [6] [4] [7].
4. Denials, exaggerations and social-media edits
Trump’s campaign denied that he ever walked backstage in ways portrayed by critics, and social media later amplified edited quotes that shifted "Miss Universe/Miss USA" into "Miss Teen USA," a change fact-checkers flagged as a deceptive reframe [4] [2] [3]. Full Fact and PolitiFact documented how images and captions repackaged the genuine Stern line to imply he described seeing minors undressing, concluding those reshared versions were inaccurate [2] [3].
5. How journalists and fact-checkers reconciled the audio and allegations
Major outlets presented both the unedited Stern remark and the separate allegations from former pageant contestants; while the tape shows Trump admitting backstage access and a cavalier attitude, independent fact-checkers stress the tape itself does not prove he entered Miss Teen USA changing rooms or saw underage girls in 2005, and that accusations of that specific behavior rest largely on separate witness statements and reporting [1] [2] [5].
6. Bottom line for the record
The original 2005 Howard Stern interview contains an explicit admission that Trump went backstage at pageants, saw contestants undressed, and felt entitled to do so as owner — but it does not, on its own, say he was referring to Miss Teen USA or to teenagers; claims that the tape proves he watched minors change are a conflation of the Stern audio with separate allegations and with later edited social posts that altered context [1] [2] [3].