On Thursday, the ”King of All Media”, Howard Stern was the guest on The View, sitting down with the ladies for only the second time in the history of show. The panelists: Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Lindsey Graham’s friend Meghan McCain, promoting his new book Howard Stern Comes Again.

Stern enjoyed friendly banter with Behar and Goldberg, thanking Goldberg for being a guest on his show where she has discussed some very serious personal stuff. He chatted about his book, with anecdotes about some of the people he had interviewed.

But then things cooled when he brought up former The View panelist Rosie O’Donnell, who had dished the dirt about her former colleagues in the recently published book Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View by Ramin Setoodeh.

Stern said:

O’Donnell was one of the best guests I’ve ever had on my show It was a miracle she was on my show because for years, like an asshole, I attacked Rosie, I didn’t really give her a chance.

Behar tried to deflect the conversation away from O’Donnell while Stern continued to dig deeper. The uncomfortable panelists hemmed and hawed about his affection for the former TheView cast member. In case you missed it O’Donnell often made things a bit rough for her fellow cast members and the show’s producers during her time on the series.

Stern to Goldberg:

So, Rosie and I, we talked and I realized it was just my own anger. But the interview I did with her in the book, she came in, she was so open and it leveled me. She began to talk about, and it was a really intimate conversation, having lost her mother at a very young age and she was in so much pain she starts to describe she would take a small baseball bat and break her hands.

After the women of The View made several unsuccessful attempts to push past the topic of O’Donnell, Stern said:

What’s the matter? You don’t want to talk about Rosie? What happened with Rosie? She’s not on the show anymore.

The View was conceived by television journalist Barbara Walters. It has been on ABC since summer 1997. The original panel was comprised of Walters, broadcast journalist Meredith Vieira, attorney Star Jones, Googleable Debbie Matenopoulos, and funny Behar, Since then, there has been 21 combinations of women on the panel, including O’Donnell in 2006–2007, 2014–2015.

Stern:

She [O’Donnell] says ‘because I was in so much pain after the loss of my mother, I wanted to feel anything else’, I thought, ugh, such an honest moment and the fact that she’s sharing it with the audience.

He went on to say he and O’Donnell became friends, with her reaching out with suggestions when he took up painting. Behar countered: “Let’s change the subject for a second.” Stern then turned to Goldberg and asked: “Whoopi, you’re anti-Rosie or you like Rosie?”

Whoopi’s response: “I don’t think about it“.

Stern touched on some of his other celebrity interviews, including his many interviews with Donald John Trump, before going on to say he wished Hillary Clinton had agreed to be on his show. Stern:

I was a huge Hillary Clinton supporter. I was for her before Obama, I loved Obama, but I loved Hillary Clinton. I thought she was a candidate that was misunderstood, that her message wasn’t coming across. I think if she would have come on the show — I was begging her, I didn’t talk to her directly, I think she was afraid of me and justifiably — she played it safe. That’s the warning to whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, don’t play it safe.

I was a huge Hillary Clinton supporter. I was for her before Obama, I loved Obama, but I loved Hillary Clinton. I thought she was a candidate that was misunderstood, that her message wasn’t coming across. I think if she would have come on the show — I was begging her, I didn’t talk to her directly, I think she was afraid of me and justifiably — she played it safe. That’s the warning to whoever becomes the Democratic nominee, don’t play it safe.