For years, Donald J. Trump treated the Howard Stern Show as a kind of unfiltered confessional — a place where bravado eclipsed caution and the boundaries between celebrity spectacle and private life dissolved on air. Between 1993 and 2015, Mr. Trump called into the program dozens of times, speaking more than 100,000 words in total. Long before he descended the golden escalator or took the oath of office, he offered listeners a candid portrait of his views on women, marriage and power.

Now, as political battles once again swirl around him — including renewed scrutiny over the handling of investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein — those recordings have resurfaced, raising fresh questions about character, judgment and the long public record that shadows his political career.

On the Stern show, Mr. Trump was often praised as a “great guest” precisely because he appeared to say what others would not. Howard Stern, whose program thrived on shock and provocation, frequently invited him to weigh in on actresses, models and public figures. Mr. Trump obliged with numerical ratings of women’s appearances, offhand comments about their desirability and casual assessments of their “prime.”

In one 2002 exchange, he mused about age and attraction. “Thirty is a perfect age,” he said. When asked what happened at 35, he joked about “checkout time,” prompting laughter in the studio. The remark, delivered in the language of locker-room banter, reflected a worldview that treated youth as currency and women as competitors in a beauty pageant that never ends.

Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend and later his wife, was occasionally drawn into the spectacle. In a 1999 call promoting a boxing event at his casino, Mr. Trump put Ms. Knauss on the line. Mr. Stern proceeded to ask her intimate questions about their sex life. She responded gamely, describing their relationship in flattering terms. Mr. Trump laughed along.

To critics, the episode illustrated a dynamic in which private matters became entertainment and boundaries were secondary to attention. To supporters, it was simply evidence of a pre-presidential Mr. Trump who played the media game better than anyone else — brazen, shameless and seemingly immune to embarrassment.

What is striking, listening back now, is not only the content but the consistency. Mr. Trump spoke of women’s bodies in transactional terms. He discussed contraception in ways that framed pregnancy as risk management. He reveled in the absence of filters. The persona was clear: dominance, appraisal, control.

Those traits, once a staple of tabloid culture and reality television, would later become elements of a political brand. “The Apprentice,” which ran for 14 seasons, polished that image into a weekly ritual of judgment and elimination. Mr. Trump has often suggested that the show amplified his national appeal. Critics have argued that it normalized a style of leadership rooted in humiliation and hierarchy.

The re-emergence of these radio archives comes at a moment when transparency and accountability are again at the center of political debate. Congress has pressed for the release of additional materials related to the Epstein investigation, legislation that has drawn bipartisan support. Former Attorney General William Barr recently defended the Justice Department’s handling of those files, arguing that legal and logistical constraints made rapid disclosure impossible.

For Mr. Trump’s opponents, the juxtaposition is potent: old recordings depicting a cavalier attitude toward women resurfacing alongside renewed scrutiny of his administration’s decisions in cases involving sexual misconduct. They argue that character is not compartmentalized — that the language of the past informs the conduct of the present.

His allies counter that the Stern appearances belong to another era, a time when shock radio rewarded outrageousness and context was everything. They note that many public figures have reinvented themselves over time, and that voters ultimately judge leaders on policy, not personality.

Still, the tapes endure. They are not anonymous leaks or secondhand accounts. They are Mr. Trump’s own words, delivered voluntarily, often enthusiastically, into a live microphone. They capture a man who understood the power of spectacle and wielded it freely.

In politics, as in broadcasting, archives have a way of resurfacing when they are least convenient. The question facing voters is not whether Donald Trump once spoke crudely on a radio show. It is whether those moments illuminate something enduring — a worldview that shaped his approach to power, loyalty and public life.

For a figure who has spent decades mastering the art of attention, the past is never entirely past. The recordings are a reminder that in the digital age, performance becomes permanent record. And the record, however uncomfortable, is part of the story.