What controversial statements did Trump make on Howard Stern about women and the Access Hollywood tape?
Executive summary
Donald Trump’s resurfaced Howard Stern interviews contain repeated crude, demeaning and sexually explicit remarks about women — including rating women’s bodies, talking about sex with “troubled” young actresses, and describing threesomes and sex outside marriage — material that media outlets tied directly to the outrage over his 2005 Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” hot-mic comments (the Access Hollywood quote itself appears in separate footage) [1] [2] [3] [4]. Critics characterized the pattern as evidence of misogyny and, in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, some commentators and lawyers described the comments as tantamount to sexual assault while supporters defended them as “locker-room talk,” a defense Howard Stern himself later rejected [5] [3] [6] [7].
1. Howard Stern tapes: a long, consistent pattern of crude talk
CNN’s review of hours of Howard Stern audio concluded that across roughly 17 years Trump repeatedly engaged in crude, demeaning conversations about women — discussing partners’ appearances, rating women on a scale of 1–10, and recounting sexual exploits — a pattern that resurfaced publicly once the Access Hollywood hot‑mic recording emerged [1] [8]. The newly aired Stern clips included remarks about Ivanka’s physique, comments about having sex with women on their menstrual cycles, and discussions of threesomes, all of which reinforced a longer record of objectifying language on Stern’s show [9] [10].
2. Specific examples from Stern: Ivanka, Lindsay Lohan, and body‑shaming
Reporters cited a range of explicit Stern-era comments: Trump evaluated his daughter Ivanka’s appearance in public interviews, said “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her” in other contexts (reported across outlets), called Lindsay Lohan “deeply troubled and therefore great in bed” in a 2004 segment, and judged women’s worth by chest size — “a person who is very flat‑chested is very hard to be a 10” — all replayed by outlets after the Access Hollywood tape surfaced [11] [2] [4] [9]. These specifics were widely reported as examples of Trump’s pattern of sexual objectification on Stern’s program [1].
3. Connection to the Access Hollywood tape and the “fame lets you do it” line
The Washington Post’s 2005 hot‑mic recording with Access Hollywood — in which Trump bragged “when you’re a star, they’ll let you do it, you can do anything — grab them by the pussy” — became the focal point that brought Stern’s earlier remarks back into news cycles, with commentators and outlets pointing to the Stern interviews as showing consistent attitudes about consent and celebrity privilege [3] [4]. Media coverage linked the Access Hollywood admission about kissing and groping without consent to the earlier Stern material to argue a through‑line in tone and substance [3] [5].
4. Defenses, interpretations, and pushback — Stern’s own view
Trump and some allies framed the Access Hollywood line and similar remarks as “locker‑room talk,” a justification cited in contemporaneous reporting [3] [12]. Critics rejected that framing: legal commentators and many media voices said the comments described behavior that amounted to sexual assault, while Stern — who had hosted many of the conversations — publicly disputed the “locker‑room” defense, saying he had never heard anyone advocate the explicit invasion of women’s bodies like the Access Hollywood phrasing and that the “grab them” line was not typical even for macho banter [5] [6] [7].
5. What the record shows and what it does not
The published record from CNN, Time, PBS, NBC and other outlets documents a string of crude, sexualized and objectifying remarks by Trump on Howard Stern and confirms the Access Hollywood hot‑mic line; outlets also report contemporaneous reactions that labeled such statements as tantamount to sexual assault [1] [2] [4] [3] [5]. If any claim about private conduct beyond these recorded remarks is asserted, the available sources in this dossier do not provide verifiable corroboration; reporting ties public, recorded statements to public criticism rather than to independent legal findings in every instance [5] [1].