Jerry Springer compares the current election season to his show

Jerry Springer compared the behavior of the presidential candidates in this election season to the atmosphere on his famously boisterous talk show.

“When I first started watching the Republican debates, I said if they’re going to start doing my show, they should start paying me,” Springer said in an MSNBC interview on Tuesday. “It’s one thing to have a television show like that, but that’s not how you run a country, and it’s disgraceful.”

Springer added that having Donald Trump as president would ruin the international image of the United States.

“The television show is over,” he said. “This is not a joke, this is our country.”

Springer, 72, is a former Democratic mayor of Cincinnati and the son of German-Jewish immigrants. He said he is supporting Hillary Clinton in the election.

“I love what Bernie Sanders says, I have nothing negative to say about him,” Springer said of Clinton’s Democratic rival. “But if you’re asking me honestly, is America in a general election going to vote for him … I don’t think so.”