Jerry Springer thinks the GOP debates look a lot like his show

Jerry Springer at his 20th anniversary show

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 15 March 2016

Jerry Springer says there's really only one difference between his television talk show and the Republican presidential race: The people who appeared on his show aren't running for president. "If you look closely at the screen, you won't find one person there running for president — that's the difference," Springer, who was once the Democratic mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, said in an interview with CNN Tuesday.

In fact, Springer says that the GOP debates are so similar to his show — which, The New York Times reports, "featured women wrestling in an inflatable pool" in its Tuesday episode — that he joked he should earn a cut. "When I first started watching the Republican debates I said that, you know, if they're going to do my show, they should start paying me," Springer said in another interview Tuesday with MSNBC. "It's one thing to have a television show like that, but that's not how you run a country."