“You’re the kind of leader I love because we’re lucky to have you in the Oval Office.”

Howard Stern said that. To Joe Biden. And he did so with a straight face.

Never mind that the subordinate clause doesn’t even logically follow the main clause. Just consider the words themselves, and consider what sort of life event must’ve befallen the once-proud “King of All Media” for him to have uttered them in that sequence. Why, it’s almost as if Dark Brandon’s handlers had intentionally selected Stern to conduct the one-hour “interview” with Scranton Joe because they knew he’d prostrate himself just exactly like that. You know — just like the news organizations that colluded with Team Biden to be preselected to ask scripted questions during one of his rare pressers.

Speaking of those rare pressers, it was no doubt the stinging criticism of the ordinarily obsequious New York Times that prompted Biden to seek out Stern for the slobber-fest. Here’s part of it:

For anyone who understands the role of the free press in a democracy, it should be troubling that President Biden has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term. The president occupies the most important office in our nation, and the press plays a vital role in providing insights into his thinking and worldview, allowing the public to assess his record and hold him to account. … Systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news organizations doesn’t just undermine an important norm, it also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability.

The Times’s Michael Shear piled on last year: “More than any president in recent memory, Mr. Biden, 80, has taken steps to reduce opportunities for journalists to question him in forums where he can offer unscripted answers and they can follow up. The result, critics say, is a president who has fewer moments of public accountability for his comments, decisions and actions.”

Heck, even Time magazine frightens Joe Biden these days.

Stern’s simpering segue began Sternly enough: “You’re the kind of leader I love,” he said. And the old Stern did love deeply flawed guests because he loved to go right at those flaws and thereby get to the unguarded and unscripted truth that no other media personality could uncover. The old Stern would’ve dispensed with presidential formality and absolutely shredded this backslapping fabulist. As the New York Post’s Kirsten Fleming, who grew up on Stern, writes: “He parodied the rich and powerful, mocking politicians’ foibles and scandals. The Stern show was an edgy bulwark against establishment stuffiness. Now Stern — who, in 2020, signed a five-year contract extension reportedly worth $100 million per year — is the establishment.”

“Was law a passion of yours?” asked a starstruck Howie. “You were a star receiver in high school. Wow.”

Wow is right. He gets $100 million to ask questions like that? And nary a word about Biden’s wastrel son, or our nation-wrecking open border, or the rampant crime in our big cities, or the Jew hatred on our campuses, or the bone-crushing inflation in our grocery stores.

As Fleming incredulously asked, “What if I told you the safest place for struggling presidential incumbent Joe Biden — a man with historically low approval ratings, a son fighting federal charges, a border crisis and a diminished capacity to know where he is at most times — was seated across from Howard Stern?”

We’d have laughed, that’s what. As Fox News’s King of Late Night, Greg Gutfeld, put it, “Howard Stern is full of more hogwash than Joy Behar’s bathtub.”

It’s clear that Biden and his handlers desperately want to run out the clock between now and November. They know he can’t sit for a real interview, so they’re scouring the landscape for sycophants. They certainly found one in Stern.

This was “the same Stern who, seemingly undeterred by status, beauty or fame, made a career of ruthlessly abstracting racy revelations from people usually not inclined to give them,” Fleming laments. “On Friday, the once almighty ‘King of All Media’ proved he is now simply a left-wing court jester. A toothless political shill.”

Indeed, Stern was just what the doctor ordered for Joe Biden. The question is whether anyone is listening.