Howard Stern has come to the defense of longtime friend Jimmy Kimmel.
The late-night talk show host has been in the news after Aaron Rodgers insinuated Kimmel would be on the client list of Jeffrey Epstein.
"There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, who are really hoping that doesn’t come out," Rodgers said on "The Pat McAfee Show" last week. "I'll tell you what, if that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle."
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Kimmel blasted the New York Jets quarterback on his late-night show Monday night, and the radio legend had his own words for the four-time MVP.
"What the f--- is with Aaron Rodgers? I mean, what a f---ing vicious thing to say," Stern said Tuesday. "You know what it is? When someone’s not witty and they’re in a feud with someone, nowadays, what they do is they just make up s--- about you. They make up a conspiracy theory. F---ing outrageous.
"I got really p---ed off about that. … What are you doing? You can’t just make up s--- about somebody in a public forum. Very upsetting. … Aaron Rodgers wanted to attack Jimmy, so he just made up a thing and called him a pedophile?"
ESPN, the network that airs McAfee's show, issued an apology for Rodgers' "dumb and factually inaccurate joke."
"It should never have happened. We all realized that in the moment," ESPN's Mike Foss said, via Front Office Sports.
McAfee, a former Indianapolis Colts punter, called the comments Rodgers made an attempt to "talk s---" and apologized for "being a part of" the drama that came about afterward.
"We obviously don’t like the fact that we’re associated with anything negative ever. We like our show to be an uplifting one. A happy one. A fun one. But it’s because we talk s--- and try to make light of everything, some things obviously people get very p---ed off about, especially when they’re that serious of allegations," he said.
Nearly 200 names previously redacted from court documents in a lawsuit against Epstein's former lover and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell are being made public after a federal judge in New York ordered their unsealing last month.
Fox News' Ryan Gaydos and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
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