Steve Madden, the eponymous founder of the famous shoe brand — and a man with a somewhat complicated history — said he had never seen anything quite like this in his 35-year career. He did an interview with the “Cutting Room Floor” fashion podcast that was posted online recently, and the reaction on social media (and beyond) has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Usually people are like ‘what do you want from a con man?’ ” he said in a recent phone interview.

But this time, “people were calling me and they’re like, ‘Did you read the comments?’ ” he said. “Some people want me to run for president.” He referred to the controversies and struggles he has been a part of over the years before pausing and adding “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

Political office isn’t in his future, but later he said that he would consider running “for the president of the board in my building” after all this positive attention.

In the podcast interview, Madden and the host, Recho Omondi, touched on a range of topics, including his past white-collar crimes and the current government. Clips of the interview have been viewed by millions of users on TikTok, and Omondi’s Patreon, which is where the podcast is posted, received “thousands” of new subscribers, she wrote in a recent post.

In the days after the interview was released, stock in the Steve Madden brand rallied to its highest point in a month, and many TikTok users noted they were going to buy his shoes. In an emailed statement, the company said Google searches for “Steve Madden” were up more than 60% and website visits from organic search had increased by 10%.

It’s a case study in the best kind of press engagement, particularly for a brand that has, for years, been outside the trendy spotlight and more often associated with clearance aisles and outlet stores, said Matthew Quint, director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School.

In the podcast interview, Madden owned up to the securities fraud he committed with Jordan Belfort, which landed him in prison in the early 2000s. (Belfort’s story inspired Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”)

“I was too ambitious, I was too greedy,” he said. “I was complicit — I’m not blaming anybody.”

On tariffs and the global trade war, he noted that policymakers, and in particular President Donald Trump, “fundamentally do not understand what they’re doing.” He also embraced the brand’s reputation for copying styles from luxury fashion houses at cheaper price points.

“It’s like calling the Beatles a knockoff band because they would take a little bit from Motown and a little bit from Elvis,” he said in the podcast interview. On the day the podcast was released, Madden sued Adidas for its “efforts to monopolize” stripes after the sneaker brand complained that two of Madden’s sneaker designs, with two stripes instead of three, infringed its trademark on the three stripes.

Most of the reaction to the podcast interview on TikTok and Reddit praised Madden’s candor and his plain way of speaking. Others found it refreshing for a business leader to speak so bluntly about the current administration’s policies.

For a younger generation, the interview also served as a moment of discovery, with many learning for the first time about Madden — his background, his struggles — or just putting a face to a name they have seen or heard over the years, Quint said. “Suddenly it’s like, Oh, that’s Steve the shoe guy?” he said. “There’s sort of a surprise factor in all of it — the uncovering of who he is and thinking of that brand in a new light.”