Claiming that he has since 'evolved and changed' from the moment in the video, the Sirius XM radio host speculates that Donald Trump Jr. and his father were behind the spread of the old skit.

• Jun 16, 2020

AceShowbiz - Howard Stern has broken his silence after he came under fire over a resurfacing blackface video. In the 1993 sketch from a New Year's Eve special, the shock jock parodied actor Ted Danson, who earlier in the year wore blackface at a Friars Club roast honoring his then-girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg.

In the sketch, Stern played an exaggerated version of a blackfaced Danson and repeated used the N-word. He was joined by his co-host Robin Quivers and comedic actor Sherman Hemsley. The video was first posted by filmmaker Tariq Nasheed and retweeted by Donald Trump Jr., who captioned it, "Yikes!"

Stern addressed the skit on his SiriusXM morning show Monday, June 15. "The s**t I did was f**king crazy," he admitted. "I'll be the first to admit. I won't go back and watch those old shows; it's like, who is that guy. But that was my shtick, that's what I did and I own it."

Saying that his craziness was driven by his ambition to succeed on the radio, he claimed that he has since changed from the moment in the video. "Over the years, I did change the show. A lot of people who did like that humor, where I was completely pulling my pants off, those people are pissed off at me now," he explained. "They think I'm a sellout and I'm not doing a good show anymore. I got soft. I came to realize in therapy, if I'm going to be with my kids, and have a successful marriage, I can't be insane completely 24 hours a day. I have to figure out a better way to communicate. So I evolved and changed."

Stern went on suggesting that Trump Jr., whom he has mocked in recent weeks, and his president father Donald Trump were behind the spread of the video. "Attacking me during the coronavirus and Black Lives Matter is absolutely f**king crazy, concentrating on me. You want to concentrate on me and bully me, and expose me, with all the TV shows I've done? They're all out there. There's nothing new here. We all know. I was the craziest motherf**ker on radio," he said.

The 66-year-old added that while he would "cringe when I look at myself 30 or 40 years ago," he claimed that Trump Jr. once confessed to him he liked the old Stern. "Donnie Junior did the show. On TV he said, 'I'm really disappointed in Howard, he's changed,' that I've gone Hollywood. Which is it? Do you want me to get in blackface and make fun of Ted Danson? I have changed," he shared.

Stern's longtime radio partner Quivers backed up his claims, saying, "I have long been a proponent of free speech and a long time ago I made a vow to myself that one word was never going to keep me out of a room. ... I was showing all that time, that it didn't mean anything about you. It maybe meant something about the people who were playing around with it, but it didn't mean anything about you and it doesn't mean anything about you."