Jerry Springer said his talk show helped people accept someone like former President Donald Trump, arguing there are similarities between the ex-chief executive and his guests.
Springer's comments were made during The Dean Obeidallah Show on Thursday. During the show, Obeidallah asked Springer: "Do you see a connection, do you see a line between the success of The Jerry Springer Show...and the way people look at TV, and what people let people get away with...Do you think it contributed to people accepting someone like Donald Trump?"
"Probably social media more, but yes, there's no question," Springer responded. "The behavior of some of the people on the show is exactly Donald Trump. The point is, the reason there's more respect given to the people, who were on my show, is they have enough sense not to run for president."
The Jerry Springer Show, which was known for its quarreling guests, ended in 2018.
Springer's comments don't mark the first time he has criticized the former president. While Trump was still in office, Springer said the president "took my show and brought it to the White House."
During his interview, Springer said that the guests on his show "don't speak the Queen's English, they don't have money, they don't live in palaces, they aren't rich and famous. But they have feelings like everybody else and when they get angry, they probably curse and they yell and sometimes fight cause they don't have the skills to settle things in different ways—that's Trump."
"But what made Trump unique, the only thing that separates him from the guests on my show is the fact that he had this delusion of he knew how to run the world, or run the country, when in fact he knows he knows nothing about how you run a country. And we paid the price for that," he added.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump's office for comment.
In 2018, the talk show host criticized the Trump administration's tax cuts, which were enacted in 2017, that resulted in the wealthiest Americans paying a lower tax rate than the bottom 50 percent of households.
"What an absurdity. What are you giving people like me a tax cut? If you're willing, because a wealthy person gets a couple more dollars in a paycheck, if you're willing to sell the soul of America for a couple more bucks, then don't ever ask a young man or woman to fight and die for this county, because you don't believe in it," Springer said speaking to a labor union in Cincinnati.
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