The Megyn Kelly Show - Jerry Springer on the American Dream, His TV Legacy, and Political Divisions

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.980 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program,

00:00:16.700 Jerry Springer. He is fascinating. Way more so than you even knew. This is a guy who was

00:00:25.360 brought to the United States by his German Jewish parents in 1949 and has an incredible story,

00:00:34.400 incredible life story, incredible story in New York Harbor under Lady Liberty as he arrived here

00:00:40.560 and all the goodness that happened in his life thereafter. You may not know he's a lawyer. He

00:00:46.100 was a mayor. He worked for Bobby Kennedy. He was a very successful news anchor, starred on Broadway,

00:00:53.140 Broadway hosted game shows, Dancing with the Stars, America's Got Talent, two CDs, a radio show.

00:00:59.500 He's got a podcast. I mean, I could go on, but the guy has seen incredible success over the course of

00:01:04.660 his life and I think has a real understanding of what this country is. We don't line up exactly

00:01:10.300 politically, but who cares, right? Who cares? We got to talk to people who might not be on our exact

00:01:15.660 side of the aisle. And I think he and I exemplify that in this interview, which I know you're going

00:01:20.840 to love. So to Jerry Springer in one sec. But first, the more you do online, like all the gift

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00:02:28.480 Thanks for having me on. And I mean, for me, it's really exciting talking with you.

00:02:33.440 Oh, well, it sounds like I'm saying, boy, I'm really a big fan, but actually I am. So although our

00:02:39.320 politics may be a little different, but other than that, you're really good. You're really good.

00:02:44.620 Thank you. I thought I thought that but was going to go someplace else like,

00:02:47.960 but I actually don't like you at all. But no, no, no, no, no. I like what you said. I almost all my

00:02:55.300 friends are liberals. I'm not a liberal. I'm not really a conservative either. But I hate that we've

00:03:00.500 gotten to this place in the country where people are assuming that's impossible now. I agree with that.

00:03:05.660 I agree. But I think that is just exacerbated by modern technology. You know, I don't think people

00:03:12.260 all of a sudden became political. I mean, throughout our history, there have been lots of

00:03:16.300 moments and, you know, even generations which were highly political. Certainly my generation in the

00:03:22.700 60s was. So that isn't new. But nowadays, suddenly, everyone is a journalist, you know, who has an iPhone.

00:03:32.060 And and there you go. And with the social media, all of a sudden, your opinion becomes part of a

00:03:38.400 movement. And then everyone lines up. And of course, cable news has done that as well, whether

00:03:43.820 it's Fox or MSNBC. And then I understand it, I guess, because, you know, everyone likes to be around

00:03:51.380 people that agree with them. You know, it's just you don't want every conversation. It's why people got

00:03:56.260 scared of Thanksgiving because it used to be, at least in the last few years, where Thanksgiving in

00:04:01.760 virtually every family was really difficult because it was always someone in your family that had the

00:04:06.280 opposing point of view. And all of a sudden it became a political argument. And, you know, there was one

00:04:13.020 year where they didn't even give me the turkey bone. And so, you know, I always got nervous around

00:04:19.940 Thanksgiving because of that. But I think now, because of that, we line up in camps. You know,

00:04:26.080 I think there's a sorting process going on is that, you know, I do think there's a difference between the

00:04:32.840 political parties in this way. I think people and this is I understand the generalization, but I think

00:04:38.600 people that are Republicans are Republicans first. In other words, it almost doesn't matter who

00:04:46.060 their candidate is. Their loyalty is to to that Republican Party. Now it's being translated into

00:04:53.440 being Trumpians. But the truth is, whoever the Republican candidate was, all those people would

00:04:59.120 be voting Trump. Democrats are something else first before they ever become Democrats. In other words,

00:05:07.720 there is a coalition of interest groups. So you're maybe you're African-American, maybe you're labor,

00:05:14.520 maybe you're a part of a group that in the environment is the major issue. So you've got

00:05:20.880 this coalition of varying interests that from the Democrat point of view, hopefully can coalesce at

00:05:26.940 the time of an election and present a unified front. Republicans don't have that problem. It's a static

00:05:33.860 kind of, I'm a Republican, I was raised a Republican. And, and I think that's why it's all of a sudden

00:05:41.600 becoming very difficult when, let's say during the Trump era, when people were saying, at least when

00:05:49.780 I talked to my Republican friends, Republican acquaintances, anytime I had a discussion, the word

00:05:56.020 but, if you talked about Trump, the word but was always part of the sentence. Yeah, I know what he's

00:06:01.500 like. And yeah, he exaggerates or sometimes doesn't tell the truth or whatever it is. But, but I like the

00:06:07.760 fact that my taxes went down, or I like the fact that he's, you know, anti-immigration or whatever.

00:06:16.900 There was always that but. And with Democrats, there's really not a but. It's that it's a more comfortable

00:06:23.540 party for whatever their group is. But their loyalty is not to, I'll vote for a Democrat no matter what

00:06:30.120 happens. Because I was raised in the, you know, with the 60s, the Democratic Party turned on Lyndon

00:06:38.120 Johnson, a president of our own party and challenged him with McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, etc. So, you

00:06:48.040 know, that was the first example in my lifetime of not necessarily staying loyal to your party,

00:06:54.520 because that wasn't the most important thing going for you. I find much more loyalty in the

00:07:02.920 Republican Party. And I think that's part of why we have this incredible division right now.

00:07:08.620 Well, that's interesting. I feel like I, I, I feel like what we see on the left more and more is,

00:07:14.160 is allegiance to identity politics, not from the what I refer to as just the liberal left,

00:07:19.580 but the far left has made wokeism, a religion that must dictate one's vote. And if one doesn't

00:07:27.200 subscribe to these hardcore identity politics, one must be denounced as a bigot. One must not vote

00:07:34.360 for one's pocketbook issues when there are these other capital O, big capital B issues, capital I

00:07:41.420 looming out there. That is true. I don't deny that is the case. But that goes to the point,

00:07:47.420 I guess I was trying to make is that there is a loyalty to something else first. And, uh, for

00:07:55.380 example, for me in, in, you know, my loyalty this time was, and I had nothing personal against

00:08:03.280 Donald Trump. I just, you know, I met him on a few occasions. I worked for him when I was, uh,

00:08:08.940 the host of the Miss Universe pageant back in 2008 in Vietnam. Um, so I, I, I, I had nothing

00:08:17.300 personal against, uh, Donald Trump. You know, I thought he was a outsized personality or whatever.

00:08:23.280 And, but I never, it never dawned on me that he was interested in going into politics. And so that

00:08:29.340 became a, I really was a, oh my gosh, we can't have him for president. And the reason I, for me,

00:08:36.260 my, where, you know, I'm an immigrant, uh, my, you know, my whole family came over from

00:08:43.120 Germany and, you know, I lost my family in the Holocaust. So immigration has always been a key

00:08:48.400 issue. And I didn't think, and this is my, my personal partisanship. I didn't think, I don't

00:08:55.340 think he understands, um, what America really is. That America is an idea. We are the only nation in

00:09:03.620 the history of the world to have been created by an idea. Every other country in the world

00:09:09.780 throughout history starts out maybe as a tribe, as a religion, as an ethnic group. They then get a

00:09:16.680 little more land. All of a sudden they want to have a country and they start a war to protect it. And

00:09:21.640 then they establish a government. That is how every country starts, except America. America was first

00:09:27.560 an idea. And then around that idea, after the, uh, revolution, let's have put together a constitution

00:09:35.760 and form the government, uh, of, you know, where you govern by the consent of the government.

00:09:41.520 That is an idea. And the idea was, uh, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence,

00:09:47.320 you know, all men are created equal and, uh, men now, obviously more than just men,

00:09:53.220 but the concept was we're all human beings and we weren't there yet. Obviously not with a slave being

00:10:00.220 three fifths of a human being. We weren't there yet, but that was the goal. That was our civic

00:10:05.120 religion. When you said before that, it's almost like a religious calling that some of the people

00:10:11.200 on the far left to, to that extent on some issues, it is religious. It's a civil religion. And that idea

00:10:18.880 is when we salute the flag, when we tear up in the seventh inning stretch singing, God bless America,

00:10:27.660 that is, it's not to the piece of land. Every country has some beautiful scenery and military

00:10:34.860 heroes and what have you. But what, what America is, at least that was the initial understanding,

00:10:42.920 certainly to, to immigrants is that, wow, this is a place where it doesn't matter where you're from,

00:10:51.020 how, whether you, how you believe in God, you know, what your religion is, what it, whatever

00:10:55.740 your ideas are, you're welcome here. The Statue of Liberty is the manifestation of that a hundred

00:11:01.840 years later from the revolution. But it's that America is something special. And if you attack

00:11:09.680 that idea from day one, it's like, whoa, then what, what are we sending our young men and women

00:11:18.680 to fight and die for? So let me ask you that because as, as you know, um, and you're talking

00:11:24.340 about Trump's policies on immigration, but what, what we're seeing now in the wake of this summer of

00:11:30.660 protests and riots is people on the streets, literally saying this idea is over. This experiment

00:11:38.860 of America needs to end. There is true hatred being expressed for our country. And, and, you know,

00:11:47.180 you seeing the football players kneel during the national Anthem, some want to call attention to

00:11:52.060 police brutality. Others think America is an awful place. And what scares me is that's spreading,

00:11:58.000 you know, they're not even saying the pledge in school anymore. It's controversial to put

00:12:02.000 an American flag in the background of a live shot, the flag.

00:12:07.580 Okay. I understand that. I understand what you're saying. And I agree with what you're saying,

00:12:11.820 but I think I'm adding to that though that though, I obviously stay, you know, I stand for the flag.

00:12:20.480 I do the pledge of allegiance. I desperately believe in America and all that. I think

00:12:27.680 what you're seeing some people on the extremes that they are so upset because America hasn't,

00:12:37.340 isn't living up, at least in their lives, if they're African American, for example, which

00:12:41.920 it's pretty hard to argue against their notion that what we say America is doesn't really reflect

00:12:51.100 in their everyday lives. That it really, and I don't think we fully understand it. I mean, we,

00:12:58.060 we, we, we're starting to understand it. We see what the anger is about, but at some point,

00:13:04.840 this has been festering for hundreds of years, certainly since the, um, uh, since the civil war.

00:13:11.940 And it's like, they're still second class citizens and their lives are, whether you're talking about

00:13:19.420 the, the neighborhoods, the schools, the housing, the healthcare, the opportunities,

00:13:24.340 the income disparity. I mean, all of this stuff, they're not all lying. It isn't like someone made

00:13:31.260 this up. Well, but they're not all saying it either. Well, I'm sure they're not.

00:13:35.600 No, because people talk about the black community as though it's uniform. And there are a lot of

00:13:40.540 really smart heterodox voices within the black community saying they don't buy that narrative

00:13:44.720 at all, that they do believe in America and they do believe while we're not perfect, you know,

00:13:49.400 we're, we're the only country that's fought a war to end slavery. We're in within a hundred years of

00:13:53.900 doing so we passed the civil rights laws and that there is opportunity in this country as proven by

00:14:00.500 people like Barack Obama, right? Oprah Winfrey, Clarence Thomas to rise to the very top of

00:14:05.600 industry. Yeah. But the real test is going to be, and I'm, I'm not arguing with you there. Yes,

00:14:10.620 they're sure. It's not monolithic. Uh, but there's a reason, my guess is there's a reason why 95% of

00:14:20.520 African-Americans or is it 92? I don't know what the percent, but you know what I'm talking about.

00:14:25.380 Vast, vast, vast majority of African-Americans, uh, vote, um, on a democratic ticket, not because

00:14:33.620 they're diehard Democrats, but because they, they don't see, they don't see that we're,

00:14:42.800 we're really concerned about that issue unless there's a disturbance.

00:14:47.640 Well, can I ask you something there? I know you, unlike most people out there understand the working

00:14:52.560 class of America. And I think that's, that's very largely driven by socioeconomic status.

00:15:00.020 And I think, you know, when I was growing up, I was a Democrat. My family were Democrats. I wasn't

00:15:04.900 really partisan. They weren't really political either, but you know, you had to be one or the

00:15:08.220 other. And my Nana, my Nana, who was born in 1915, used to say, Republicans, they're for rich people.

00:15:15.400 We're Democrats, right? Cause we didn't have any money. And I, I think there is still maybe less

00:15:21.920 though these days, um, a knee jerk instinct to say, if you don't have money, you're a Democrat

00:15:27.340 because the Democrats are for you given their relationship with labor and so on. But I think

00:15:32.560 it's changing, not only the working class going for Trump and some of these, you know, in Appalachia

00:15:37.460 in the, in the Rust Belt in, in 2000, 2016, but he even increased his share of the black vote.

00:15:44.040 So it wasn't by huge margins this time around, but he sure did. And the Latino vote. And a lot of folks

00:15:49.640 said that came down to socioeconomic issues. They want, they trusted him to improve their pocketbook.

00:15:55.380 There's no question about that. Obviously people that voted for him, uh, thought that he would

00:16:02.560 improve their lives more. Yeah, that's true. But I'm just saying the vast majority people that are,

00:16:11.260 let's say this people who are of a group just for a second, I'll talk groups that are in a group

00:16:17.660 that by and large, you know, uh, initially, or even now it's a look at the, the women's vote,

00:16:25.260 um, uh, whatever group that they thought weren't getting a fair shake by or by the

00:16:32.420 by the government, which does basically reflect the interests of at least socioeconomically people

00:16:41.400 like me. I mean, you know, they're giving me this incredible tax break, which is insane.

00:16:46.960 Insane. When we have all these real needs right now of, of, um, of people and not just because

00:16:54.380 of the pandemic, just in general, real needs of, of people at the lower end of the economic scale,

00:16:59.360 or even the middle class that need some help. In other words, they see the government as

00:17:03.660 representing wealthy, powerful interests, which is true. I mean, it does mostly represent that.

00:17:12.320 On both sides. On both. That is, I agree with you on that. I think it's true on both sides.

00:17:17.100 Yeah. Well, yeah, because these politicians want to be reelected. So they rationalize how it starts

00:17:23.020 out. Let's say they originally go into politics for a, a nice reason. They want to help people.

00:17:28.780 They want to make the country better. But then once they're in, they kind of enjoyed their life

00:17:34.380 at being in Congress or being a Senator. And it's, it's not a bad way to live and the prestige and

00:17:40.580 all of that. And then comes up the next election and suddenly they're 40 years old, 50 years old.

00:17:48.020 And if they lose the next election, that really disrupts their life. You know, they're, and so

00:17:55.600 all of a sudden they rationalize and the rationalization is, well, I'm willing to bend a

00:18:00.840 little bit here because if I don't get reelected, I can't do the good that I originally came in and

00:18:05.840 wanted to do. So that's how the, the intellectual corruption starts. Not, I'm not talking about the

00:18:12.320 obvious blatant corruption when you're getting, you know, being paid off, but just in general,

00:18:17.140 they start rationalizing and it's intellectually dishonest. And that's why people then get really

00:18:23.180 upset with government. So if we're talking about people on the edges, yeah, if someone's throwing

00:18:28.100 a rock through a window, but let's be honest, the number of people that were actually doing that

00:18:34.440 compared to the 80 something million people who voted for, uh, who voted against Trump. And

00:18:43.020 notice I'm saying voted against Trump more than necessarily voted for a Democrat. Um, that

00:18:49.900 most overwhelmingly, most of them went throwing rocks through windows. So just like I shouldn't say

00:18:57.180 if the Republican party is all white supremacist, neither should we say that, Oh, all these riots,

00:19:04.980 because you want riots. Look at the 1960s. We burned down cities. I don't mean a block. I mean,

00:19:11.400 we burned down cities. We burned draft cards. We had, I mean, the country was an armed camp. Uh,

00:19:18.840 the democratic convention in Chicago. Um, I mean, there was just so much by the assassinations,

00:19:25.520 um, you know, Martin Luther King, Bobby, um, and it just, the whole year was, it was that 1968 was

00:19:35.300 unbelievable. So yeah, there is on the extremes, but in the middle, I understand why some of these

00:19:42.420 quote groups, whether it's women, whether it's, uh, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, labor,

00:19:52.180 working class people, why these people often find or mostly find a home in the democratic party,

00:20:01.600 because other than, and I would say other than, uh, pro choice, uh, there is no litmus test to be

00:20:10.020 a Democrat. And that's why the democratic party has so much trouble. Once they get elected,

00:20:13.960 they, you know, you know, we're not a, we don't like, uh, organized political parties. We're Democrats.

00:20:20.620 Uh, what's his name set that back when, but I would say that, I mean, just knowing what I know about the

00:20:25.160 other side, I would say they're much more in favor of personal responsibility. They want government to get

00:20:30.160 out of the way, not to make the way they want less regulation to open up the economy and let her

00:20:35.960 rip, which has, which happened under Trump. It happened prior to COVID. And so there, what they

00:20:42.120 want is opportunity. And that's one of the reasons why his crackdown on illegal immigration to go back

00:20:47.560 to your first point was popular with the working class. They were saying, I don't want people who

00:20:53.520 are here illegally to take my jobs. That's one of the reasons people believe that Trump did so well

00:20:58.460 with Latinos down in Texas because they understood how important legal immigration is to the country

00:21:04.200 and how damaging illegal immigration can be and how important it is to stand up against it for the

00:21:08.740 people who are already here and maybe struggling. Should we, I understand that's what they say. I

00:21:14.320 understand what they say. And in some cases, I don't think there's any question for some individual

00:21:19.360 people that is, that's true. But for the vast, vast, vast number of people in America, how,

00:21:29.740 how many, honestly, if you're in a room alone with God and you have to tell the truth or your life.

00:21:36.460 So for, you know, how many really go to sleep every night and saying, my life is horrible because of the

00:21:43.780 immigrant came into this country.

00:21:45.360 I mean, Jerry, you, you got to go spend some time on the Southern border and those numbers go way up.

00:21:51.000 Well, I do. I do. It's more so there. It is more so there, but it's not, it's not overwhelming. I

00:21:57.500 think it's basic because I, people up here, well, I'm in Florida. That's where I live. But anyway,

00:22:02.700 when I'm up North, uh, you know, people there complain about immigration and there's, that never

00:22:09.720 comes up that they took my job because the people I'm talking to have a very nice job or whatever

00:22:15.140 kind of a job, their police officers or whatever, they're not losing their job because of that.

00:22:19.940 And they have the same attitude about immigration.

00:22:22.000 But they're worried about the security threat. I mean, they're also worried about the security

00:22:24.440 threat because they're, what they're arguing, no one's arguing against legal immigration. Well,

00:22:27.920 some people are, some people are. The end cultures of the world aren't really in favor of that

00:22:31.380 either. But the core Republican party talks about illegal immigration and how to crack down on it.

00:22:36.660 And even under Obama, you know, he deported more illegal immigrants and unlawful immigrants than,

00:22:41.940 than president Trump did. And I'm not, I'm not proud of that, but clearly, you know, there's

00:22:48.360 a racial context for many of the people of why they're against immigration. Why should we just

00:22:55.760 open up the border and let a bunch of illegal enter entrance come in? That's not the alternative

00:23:01.600 though. The alternative that, that's setting up a straw, uh, uh, can't think of the, uh, the phrase,

00:23:08.420 but that's not yet, but that isn't the, that isn't the choice. The choice is, yes, let's have legal

00:23:15.600 immigration, but let's have, let's have enough, uh, judges on the border or lawyers on the border so

00:23:22.340 that when someone applies to get in, let's make, let, let them be able to go through the process.

00:23:27.920 Let's not kick out children that have lived there, you know, 15 years in this country. And, uh, you

00:23:34.960 know, moms, uh, they snuck over the border to get a life for their children. Who knows what their

00:23:41.380 circumstances was. I don't know a single parent that wouldn't do everything in their power, everything

00:23:48.500 to, uh, make sure that their kids got to live. And if they could, uh, you know, get across the

00:23:56.260 border, I understand the human emotion of trying to get there. So if I'm saying protect the borders,

00:24:00.940 but I'm saying also have a process when these people come up and ask, um, for, um, being able to

00:24:08.200 come into this country, that there's a process there. I would take, for example, I would hire

00:24:15.120 10,000, if necessary, whatever that was, um, graduates of law school to give, uh, one year

00:24:24.220 and maybe we, you know, wind up, um, helping with their tuition of law school, but for one year

00:24:30.080 to set them up on the border so that we would have a, uh, a court system. We're just dealing with

00:24:37.300 immigration. And then we'll find out who's legal gets to come in or go through the process. Who's

00:24:43.580 not, we are not going to put in, but to throw out. I mean, I'm all for taking a hard look at

00:24:49.780 asylum claims. You know, I'm in danger where I am and I need help. That's one thing, but trying to

00:24:55.260 sneak across the border and then, and then get the rights that others who came before you from,

00:24:59.820 from the border waited in line for and worked for and studied to achieve. That's not okay. And so

00:25:06.000 it's for sure we could be doing it better, but I think, you know, one of the things that some

00:25:10.380 Democrats, why even Joe Biden wants amnesty for the existing 11, 12 people who have told me people

00:25:15.440 who are here undocumented now, that's not right. That's not fair to the people who did it by the

00:25:21.640 book. Well, the process now, it admittedly, the process is different in different countries,

00:25:28.380 but in most of these countries, and I certainly know it was true during the time of Nazi Germany,

00:25:34.920 when my parents were trying to get out. I mean, most of my family didn't, but mom and dad finally

00:25:42.020 did. But the people that did get out, you know, there was all kinds of stuff going on to get up

00:25:47.580 on the list. Who did you know? Could you pay some money to get up there? And, you know, parents would

00:25:53.240 do whatever they could to, to save the life of themselves and their children, you know, and that is

00:26:00.440 such a human that, you know, putting the politics aside, who doesn't feel for that?

00:26:07.440 No, I understand that. Today, they would be asylum seekers.

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00:27:55.800 Back to the point I was making at the top, which is I do think you have an understanding of the

00:28:00.200 working class in a way most Americans do not. And I heard it from you a few years back. You were

00:28:06.240 celebrating the 25th year anniversary of your show. You were in a tuxedo. You got a little emotional.

00:28:13.060 It was actually really sweet. And we're going to play the clip. Here it is.

00:28:16.320 Well, what I've learned over our quarter century of shows is that deep down, we are all alike.

00:28:23.120 Some of us just dress better or had a better education or better luck in the gene pool of

00:28:28.060 parents. I'll say it again. Deep down, we are all the same. We all want to be happy. We cry when we're

00:28:36.480 hurt. We're angry when we've been mistreated. And to be liked, accepted, and respected, not to mention

00:28:42.620 loved, is the greatest gift of all. Yes, we're all alike. Know this. There's never been a moment

00:28:50.000 in the 25 years of doing this show that I ever thought I was better than the people who appear

00:28:55.460 in our stage. I'm not better, only lucky. So thanks for the 25 years. We've signed on to do a whole bunch

00:29:07.740 more. And as long as I stay healthy, we will. And on that note, take care of yourself and each other.

00:29:14.160 Ah, what I love about that clip is, number one, a theme I've seen in you, which is humility.

00:29:22.300 And number two, a willingness to understand we have more in common than we do that separates us.

00:29:29.700 And to just sort of look at people for their humanity, as opposed to with judgment. There's

00:29:34.600 so much judgment today, isn't there? Yes, there absolutely is. And I think a lot of the judgment,

00:29:41.180 and this really is on both sides. It's almost as if, I don't know, politics has become a sport

00:29:49.120 because it's covered as a sport. It's covered as a contest. And everyone, you know, you're rooting

00:29:57.420 for one team or the other. And the team you line up with starts to define you, who you are. And I know

00:30:06.640 when Democrats say, oh, that's a Trumpian, I know they have an absolute image of what that person is.

00:30:14.160 And when Republicans will say, oh, that's a liberal Democrat or, you know, a lefty or a lib,

00:30:22.780 yeah, a lib, they immediately have that image. So I 100% agree with you. There is that. And I think

00:30:32.640 I think it's kind of inevitable because of our culture today, the technology today, where it's

00:30:41.040 so easy to line up with one side or the other. And then, because everyone likes to find people who

00:30:47.840 agree with them, they keep going to those same websites. They keep watching the same cable news.

00:30:52.780 They keep, you know, it's just, you know, and all of a sudden, you become a fanatical supporter of

00:30:57.820 that side. Mickey and I, my wife and I were, it was a week before the election. And by the way,

00:31:03.880 this happens on both sides. So I'm not picking on Republicans here. But we were standing here in

00:31:09.920 Sarasota. There's a, you know, a major road. And traditionally, people stand there with their signs,

00:31:18.140 you know, waving the signs. And, and, you know, Mickey is the most private person in the world.

00:31:23.580 And it's very political, but doesn't, you know, she's not upfront like I am. But anyway, we had

00:31:29.680 our, all the signs said was Biden-Harris. And we stand along the road with, you know, a couple of

00:31:36.360 hundred other people that were standing there. This was a Biden group. And these cars would come by

00:31:42.720 giving us the finger. And Mickey, you know, and we're saying, why? It wasn't like our,

00:31:51.660 yeah, our sign didn't say Trump's an idiot. We hate Trump, you know, whatever. And it was so

00:31:58.620 depressing. You know, finally, we said, let's just go home. Yeah, I know.

00:32:03.800 I know. Of course, we did see that. Yeah, I know. I like you aspire to see a country in which we lean

00:32:12.680 into our better angels. But I think I agree with you that the internet, while it's done so much good,

00:32:18.860 I feel like its number one harm is the damage it's done to human relationships and intimacy. But this

00:32:25.120 is a, this is a related problem where it's made us so tribal. It's made us just committed to

00:32:31.100 confirmation bias, less open minded, even though we have more access to more information.

00:32:36.460 Let me tell you, so instead of watching cable, they should have been watching the Springer show,

00:32:39.920 as so many people were for 27 years, the show just ended in 18 after, right, almost 30 years.

00:32:48.780 And I wanted to ask you, what do you mean? What are you saying? Stop it.

00:32:53.120 Well, I mean, the show had no redeeming social value. And but it was fun. It was it was fun to

00:33:03.120 do. And it was crazy. And, you know, and I realized over time that no matter how much people would

00:33:09.640 complain about it, they obviously watched it. Otherwise, they wouldn't know what they were

00:33:12.940 complaining. It was, you know, it was one of those guilty pleasures or whatever. It was.

00:33:17.120 What did people love about it? What did people love about it?

00:33:20.100 Well, at first, the shock, because they'd never seen behavior like that on television.

00:33:27.240 American television up until the 90s, you know, the early 90s. In fact,

00:33:32.680 about the time that our show came along, American television was almost exclusively upper middle class

00:33:41.760 white, whether it was the Seinfeld, you know, Seinfeld or Friends or whatever.

00:33:50.100 Whatever the shows were at the time, they were always well scrubbed upper middle class white people.

00:33:55.460 And if you were African-American, you it was either on one of the side channels or you had to be a doctor

00:34:02.980 like Cosby was. But it was even the newscasts were all white. And then when they started to have one

00:34:11.300 anchor be a black person, they had to speak with the upper middle class white accent and language, you know,

00:34:20.460 it was just all that long came our show. And for the first time on major networks, you saw every day

00:34:30.080 people who didn't speak the Queen's English, who weren't upper white middle class, who weren't

00:34:36.400 well scrubbed. And it wasn't that they had never seen behavior like that, because that is absolutely

00:34:44.500 false. You know, we had myths, you know, when we, you know, we had Hitler and no one had a television set.

00:34:50.960 So it isn't like television created bad behavior. That's absurd. But what it did do, we were shocked

00:34:58.040 that where we used to have our sitcoms where a husband and wife would sleep in separate beds.

00:35:04.900 Uh, I, I love Lucy or whatever. Uh, or the Donna Reed show or that all of a sudden we saw this

00:35:12.500 language, which was bleeped out, but they knew what the words were, uh, this misbehavior, this,

00:35:18.760 because everything that was ever on our show is already in the Bible, in Shakespeare,

00:35:25.500 in great literature. So there was nothing new. It was the median in which it was shown.

00:35:32.920 I look at it and it's like, okay, so there were, there were all those shows that you point out,

00:35:36.620 Cosby friends, et cetera. And then along comes Springer with you slept with my stripper sister.

00:35:42.980 And I was like, the guardian was given, it was wasn't that a great, wasn't that a great one?

00:35:48.460 I didn't see it. I didn't see it, but I love the title. So the guardian writes this about the show

00:35:52.260 in the last 25 years, the Jerry Springer show has delivered more on-air fights, ranting white

00:35:57.140 supremacists, adulterous strippers and transphobia than anything else on television. It's an

00:36:02.360 undeniable phenomenon, a game changer that turned daytime television into an entirely different,

00:36:09.120 somewhat terrifying place. What do you think of that review?

00:36:14.080 Well, well, it's, it's accurate and it wasn't intended. Um, you know, how it all, how it all

00:36:20.340 came about is, uh, I was anchoring the news for 10 years in Cincinnati for the NBC affiliate.

00:36:26.940 And we were pretty dominant in the ratings, but the company that owned us, uh, multimedia,

00:36:34.960 they also own talk shows. They own Phil Donahue, Sally, Jesse, Raphael, a bunch of others.

00:36:40.500 And, um, in fact, I think they also had Rush Limbaugh's, uh, television show. He had a television

00:36:47.520 show for, for a while. And, uh, so they had various talk shows. And one day they took me to lunch and said

00:36:55.700 that Phil Donahue was retiring and, um, we're going to start another talk show and you're the

00:37:01.520 host. So I was assigned to it. This wasn't anything I, you know, I hadn't seen, you know,

00:37:06.380 I had a job like a lot of people did and during the day. And so I wasn't, uh, you know, I didn't

00:37:12.340 know much about talk shows at all. They just decided you were an award winning evening news anchor at the

00:37:17.340 time. Uh, yeah, it, it, it went well, you know, but, um, yeah, we did. Yeah. And, uh, but anyway,

00:37:24.940 so I enjoyed doing the news, uh, and because particularly in Cincinnati, they initially,

00:37:31.980 when I finished being mayor, uh, NBC offered me the job to anchor, but I had no interest in being a

00:37:40.060 news anchor. I wanted to do political commentary. So the deal we made was that I could do the news

00:37:46.980 every night. Uh, I did the news at five 36 and 11, but at the end of the 11 o'clock newscast,

00:37:54.160 I would get two minutes to do my own commentary. And, uh, which at that time was real. I mean,

00:38:03.960 it was amazing that the network, that the, uh, station let me do that because up to then

00:38:08.640 stations had editorials, but they were always by the general manager, station manager or whatever.

00:38:13.720 It wasn't by the person who delivered the news. So, uh, I had to put on a different hat and I really

00:38:20.800 worked hard. I'm not sure I always succeeded at it, but I really worked hard that when I did the

00:38:26.800 news, I did it without raising my eyebrow, without any aside. In other words, cause it was Reagan was

00:38:33.760 president when I started in 82. Um, so, you know, there was never any anti Reagan stuff when I was

00:38:41.160 doing the news. And a lot of times it wasn't political when I did my commentary, but that's

00:38:46.560 when I gave my view and, uh, or on what was going on, something about, you know, like the commentaries

00:38:53.020 I do at the end of the crazy show. Um, that's where the final thought came from. And so I was doing the

00:39:00.000 news, but how I got the talk show is because we were doing so well in the ratings, they said,

00:39:04.780 you're going to do the court show. I said, I didn't want to give up the news. And they said,

00:39:08.300 you can do both. So in the beginning for the first two years, I would get up in the morning

00:39:12.800 in Cincinnati, fly to Chicago, where I do the talk show fly back in the afternoon to Cincinnati.

00:39:18.920 Cause I did the news at, as I said, five 36 and 11. So, but after two years or a year and a half,

00:39:24.780 actually it got exhausting. And, uh, and so I, that's when I said, well, I'll do the show,

00:39:31.440 just the show, but the show was serious in the beginning. You know, um, we had serious people on

00:39:39.240 it. It wasn't the crazy show it became it's one day about three years in, we did a show on the Ku Klux

00:39:48.840 Klan and, uh, and a, a fight broke out on stage and then people in the audience charged. And then

00:39:58.320 it became basically a riot. We had no security because whoever heard of a fight on television

00:40:03.380 and, um, the next day we did, but I, we honestly thought that's the end of my career. We're,

00:40:11.000 we're done. And I honestly thought, well, that was it. We can't. And, uh, but they kept exactly the

00:40:18.000 opposite. Wait, can I ask you? So this is the, the, the show started in 91. So this is still the

00:40:22.640 early to mid nineties. I'm just curious at this point, were you married? Were you with Mickey or

00:40:27.340 like, were you going through this, like this shift from news anchor to talk show host with a support

00:40:33.520 in your life? Yes. But here's, here's, here's the lovely thing about it. Um, about 22 years into

00:40:42.300 the show. Um, we're now doing the show by the 22nd year we were doing the show in Stamford,

00:40:48.720 Connecticut. Um, and in the middle of the show, uh, the producer calls me over and says, Oh, Mickey,

00:40:55.760 Mickey called. Well, Mickey never calls me, you know, during a show or something like that,

00:41:00.260 you know, during the day. So I said, Oh my God. So I run to the phone. I say, honey,

00:41:04.440 what's wrong. She said, Oh my God. I said, what? She says, she took off her blouse. I said,

00:41:13.140 what are you talking about? She said, I just saw your show. Is this what people are screaming about?

00:41:19.560 And I said, what are you married to me? You know, now we've been married 47 years, but

00:41:26.200 you, you've never even watched. She watched like the first year I had this show. Oh my God.

00:41:34.960 She says, honey, that's disgusting. That's crazy. I said, honey, you like your, you like our house.

00:41:41.880 This is how you got it. Yeah. Well, in my mind, I was thinking that, but you don't stay married 47

00:41:48.040 years by saying that. That's a good point. That's a good point. Now some thoughts are better left unsaid.

00:41:52.960 So what, what about it? Cause I want to, of course, I forgive me for asking the question

00:41:57.380 everybody asks, but I do want to know, is there one that stands out to you as particularly nutty?

00:42:02.380 Um, well, pure nutty was the guy who married his horse. Um, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I want

00:42:13.840 you to know, I came out against it. So it's like, I don't have, you know, don't say I don't have

00:42:18.060 values. I, a family. Was that real? Was there actually a guy who wanted to marry a horse?

00:42:22.600 Or was that like a setup? Yeah. What happened is we, um, it was in the newspaper. He lived outside

00:42:28.200 of Branson, Missouri in a rural area. And, um, so, uh, and people knew that, and they had a little

00:42:36.200 ceremony there. And so then the show contacted, I guess, but anyway, Oh, I should tell you on this

00:42:43.820 story, which, which has some relevance is I'm never allowed to know the subject of the show. I'm not

00:42:51.360 allowed to know anything about it. All they do is, is when I go out there, they hand me a card

00:42:56.780 and the card, all the card has on it are the names of the guests because I haven't met them.

00:43:01.920 So that's why the start of every segment on the old show is me saying, I introduced the names and

00:43:10.020 then I say, so what's going on? And then they start telling me their story. And I'm, am supposed

00:43:16.360 to ask questions that you would ask sitting at home watching and then make some jokes. So basically I

00:43:24.060 was paid to ask questions and then tell, you know, make some comment about it, joke about it.

00:43:29.020 So, but I never knew what the subject was. So this particular show, uh, I saw, I forget the guy's

00:43:35.760 name. Let's say it was Bob. I'd say, please welcome Bob to the show. Uh, uh, Bob. So what's going on?

00:43:42.260 And he was about a, I'd say about a 45 year old man. And he's sitting on a chair on stage. And I

00:43:47.900 say, Bob, what's going on? He says, well, I'm having trouble with the neighbors. Well, you know,

00:43:52.360 what's, what's wrong? What's, what's the trouble? They don't seem to like my wife. Well, why wouldn't

00:43:57.240 they like your wife? Does she cause trouble? No, she's quiet. She keeps to herself. Well, I can see

00:44:02.880 this is going nowhere. So I look at the card and I look at the next name. I say, okay, let's bring

00:44:09.020 out your wife. Out comes this horse. The crowd goes crazy. Now I, as what I would argue a reasonably

00:44:17.480 normal person said, Oh my God, stop the cameras because I'm assuming his wife fell off the

00:44:24.000 horse. So it didn't dawn on me that the horse was the wife. So here's the producer, which

00:44:32.500 is waving his arms. No, no, that's the wife. What? And then we take it from there. And it

00:44:40.100 was really weird.

00:44:42.100 Was it a good looking horse?

00:44:44.460 Oh, she was adorable. But a pixel wasn't long in the two.

00:44:48.640 That's right. Yeah. No, I said, why the long face? Yeah. Um, so, uh, so she, but every time

00:44:58.500 I stood between Bob and pixel pixel with her head would just kind of nudge me out of the

00:45:06.780 way, she wanted to keep Bob in the line of sight. It was just, just crazy.

00:45:14.460 A few years later, um, I do the national tour of the price is right. The live show at casinos

00:45:22.320 and theaters around the country. And we did, uh, some shows in Branson, Missouri and one

00:45:29.120 contestant that came up and, you know, I always talk to them first before they play the games.

00:45:34.880 And she says, you know, uh, our town is famous on your show. And I told, tell me about that.

00:45:42.760 And he says, well, we have someone here who was on your show. His name was, and I didn't remember

00:45:46.660 the name, but he was the fellow who married his horse and the crowd goes crazy. And I say, yeah.

00:45:52.860 And she said, yeah, he lives. It's about 30 miles up the road here. And, uh, so, yeah, that's,

00:45:58.660 that's the most, that's the craziest we ever had. Well, I got it. I, I, my number one takeaway is my

00:46:04.220 producers are phoning it in on this show. I, we got to have a serious heart to heart after this is

00:46:09.780 over. So, but the, but the truth is who a, who could tear their eyes away when watching that and

00:46:17.000 B, this is why people would criticize the show. Right. I mean, I, Bernie Goldberg, he, he said you

00:46:24.160 were screwing up America and you know, that's of course what people say about the show. It's just,

00:46:28.800 it's the, it's the dregs of society and it appeals to our worst instincts. And I know you said you,

00:46:35.740 you wouldn't watch your show, but do you think overall on balance, it was a force for good?

00:46:41.800 Probably not. Other than if there is good, first of all, the show was put on purely for entertainment

00:46:48.240 and I agreed to host the show and I'm not allowed, you know, under the contract, I'm not allowed to

00:46:53.860 know what the show is about. So I can't then, it was supposed to be dysfunctional behavior or people

00:47:02.300 or people outside the mainstream. That was the concept of the show. And I agreed to, when they

00:47:10.400 signed me up, I agreed, I'll host the show, you know, and we've had all kinds of people on the show

00:47:16.480 that are dysfunctional. So when somebody, for example, if I was doing a show, a basketball show,

00:47:23.620 let's say I'm on one of the sports channels and every day I'd have basketball players on,

00:47:28.320 that wouldn't be strange. Well, if you're doing a show about dysfunctional behavior,

00:47:32.680 obviously you're going to have dysfunctional people on. If you're doing a, if you have a show

00:47:37.820 about, you know, serial killers, that's what you're going to have on every day. So I was never shocked

00:47:44.180 that, oh gee, how do you have these people on? Well, that's what the show is about. Now, if there is

00:47:49.500 any good to be gleaned from it other than, look, the show was aimed at high school and college age kids.

00:47:55.400 I mean, let's face it, that was mainly the audience, college age kids. The audience,

00:48:01.060 the studio audience were all college kids. And so, yeah, if I were in college, of course I would

00:48:07.260 have watched the show. I'd be laughing, hooting and doing it, you know, just, I was a crazy college

00:48:12.080 kid. But, you know, as a 70, now 77 year old man, I'm not, you know, no, I'm not, I wouldn't watch

00:48:20.180 a show like that. I mean, that has no particular interest. So there's, oh, this is crazy. And then

00:48:25.080 let's move on. What did it teach you about human nature?

00:48:29.200 Kind of what I said in that thing you ran is that we really are all alike. Some of us just

00:48:35.020 dress better. I really, really.

00:48:36.940 Okay. But I, but I married a human. I, I don't see anything in common between me and Bob.

00:48:42.840 Well, no, but he, but my guess is he wants to be happy. My guess is if he's angry, he'll sometimes

00:48:50.040 even curse. Um, you know, I'm sure, you know, pray God, obviously he's not, he's not a violent

00:48:56.760 person. So that obviously is beyond the pale. Um, but here's the example I give and I've given

00:49:02.900 in other interviews, I guess, is when, if a professor of English at Harvard comes home one

00:49:10.600 night and sees his wife in bed with the next door neighbor or whoever, he is not going to say

00:49:19.000 forsooth, my dear, what it is that I have found. He's going to grab the bike guy, probably start

00:49:24.700 cursing, physically throw him out of the house, maybe throw something. He's so angry. In other

00:49:30.480 words, we human beings react at all different, with all different ways in all different manners.

00:49:40.340 So when people come on our show to talk about something that is going on dysfunctionally in

00:49:46.280 their own life, we're seeing them at that moment. But that very same, not the, let's say not, well,

00:49:53.820 even the guy who married his horse, he could otherwise be an absolutely warm person.

00:50:01.220 You know, he could be polite. He, uh, you know, he probably has a job, uh, goes to work. The

00:50:09.360 people in the town obviously knew him. The office Christmas party is weird.

00:50:13.720 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, bring your own horse.

00:50:18.500 More with Springer in one moment, but first let's talk about Bloomsie Box. In the spirit of holiday

00:50:23.740 sharing, and we are still on the holidays, the, all those people you forgot about, you can still get to

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00:50:32.300 it's a small, small list of special people. I don't really love holiday shopping, but my mom is

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00:51:47.720 for 15% off at B L O O M S Y box.com. And now we're going to bring you a feature before we get

00:51:54.000 back to our guest, uh, that we call asked and answered here on the Megan Kelly show. Steve

00:51:58.400 Krakauer, our EP is with me and, uh, he's been firing through all the questions that we get. And

00:52:03.480 what are, what are you seeing? Yeah, Megan, we've gotten some great questions on our social media

00:52:06.840 accounts that we're, we're keeping an eye on at all times. That's at Megan Kelly show. And you can ask

00:52:11.220 your questions there as well, uh, or at our email address questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. This one

00:52:16.900 comes to us from Ashley Jenkins, who has an interesting one. She wants to know if you'll

00:52:20.880 ever run for political office. Hmm. Thank you for that, Ashley. Um, I don't think so. I wouldn't

00:52:27.800 totally rule it out because I really felt like the country needed me. I, I would consider it,

00:52:32.880 but it's not something I really want to do. Um, I just think it's like out of the frying pan into the

00:52:37.660 fire fire there. You know, it's like, I don't really like having an acrimonious life. It's acrimonious

00:52:42.520 enough as it is. And I'm, I do it because I feel I must, I just, I can't, I tried to keep myself

00:52:47.580 away and I couldn't do it. So maybe that's what will lead me into that fire at some point, but I

00:52:51.480 don't know what would I run as I definitely wouldn't be a Democrat. I don't feel aligned

00:52:55.320 with the Republican party either. And I don't think independence can really win. I don't know.

00:52:59.640 Maybe I'll be like Trump having been a lifelong one party, just declare myself some other party

00:53:03.880 and tell people that's what I'm doing. Um, anyway, I don't know. I'm, I'm not really political

00:53:07.860 by nature. I just have some strong views on various cultural issues. And I like, I love

00:53:11.820 the first amendment and I, there's a lot I believe in, but I'm not like partisan. I don't

00:53:16.300 know if a person like me could get elected. Um, I don't know just, just whether I want to

00:53:20.380 do that to my life. So standby, I'm not ruling it out entirely. If the country really needed

00:53:24.680 me, I think about it, but I'd obviously have to leave New York city, which I'm doing anyway,

00:53:28.940 because my politics do not align with the folks, uh, in my neighborhood. New York state

00:53:34.240 has, has elected some Republicans at the senatorial and gubernatorial level. Um, I don't know,

00:53:40.600 just doesn't seem like a job that's well-respected anymore. Right. I'm kind of rambling now, but

00:53:44.420 it doesn't, I used to look at these senators and governors think, Oh wow. Now I'm like, eh,

00:53:50.140 depends on the person, but just the job itself feels a little. So I guess the answer is we'll

00:53:56.280 see, Ashley, we'll see, but thank you for your question. We'll taking, we'll take some more

00:54:00.920 questions at devil make care, media.com. And, uh, also we'll take them on all of our online

00:54:06.600 social media, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Uh, and now back to Springer.

00:54:13.820 I always find this, I think most people, not everyone, but most people have some family secret

00:54:19.360 they, they wouldn't want to see on television or on the front page of the national inquirer.

00:54:23.340 And what you find when you actually start talking about said things is you are not alone. Most people

00:54:29.620 have an effed up family in one way, shape or form because we're human. So it does give you a little

00:54:37.000 comfort to see in the same way I watched the real housewives just to remind myself that I'm a good

00:54:41.780 person. Um, it sort of gives you that, that feeling. And you know what I love about you,

00:54:48.640 you own it and you, even though you're a very successful guy, I mean, pretty much everything

00:54:53.620 you touched over your career turned to gold. You are humble. And I, I saw it. I, my producer

00:54:59.600 forwarded this to me before today and our whole team circulated it. I, I, my husband read it over

00:55:05.740 and over. We were talking about it for a couple of days. Uh, it's, it's evidenced in the graduation

00:55:10.800 speech you gave at Northwestern law school back in 2008. It's amazing. And I encourage all the

00:55:16.340 listeners to Google it, Google it and read it and maybe put it on your wall. And I'll just,

00:55:21.240 I'll just give them a sense. Okay. So bear with me. So some of the students complained,

00:55:25.500 of course, cause they complain about anybody, but they, they expressed a deep sense of anger,

00:55:29.680 embarrassment, and surprise that you would be invited. So you get up there and instead of

00:55:33.440 ignoring it and just trying to go highbrow, you say, and I quote to the students who invited me,

00:55:39.720 thank you. I'm honored to the students who object to my presence. Well, you've got a point.

00:55:45.540 I too would have chosen someone else in an attempt to soften the pain. Let me stipulate

00:55:51.220 to the facts. You are right. I am an imperfect being and I feel hardly qualified to tell you

00:55:57.180 what to do with your lives, though. I've been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of

00:56:01.460 success in my various careers. Let's be honest. I've been virtually everything you can't respect

00:56:07.440 a lawyer, a mayor, a major market news anchor, and a talk show host pray for me. If I get to heaven,

00:56:13.860 we're all going. I love that. Your humor has clearly served you well as well. I mean,

00:56:20.760 you sound like you have a very healthy sense of humor, most of all about yourself. How critical

00:56:25.800 has that been to your wellbeing? Well, I, I, I just think it's an, it's a comforting way

00:56:32.820 to, to live. I don't want to sound preachy, but I guess if you, if you're just really honest with

00:56:38.820 yourself, cause you know, what you're really like, you know, and you know how much luck was involved

00:56:44.520 in my success. I'm not being modest. It was, I have the only job I ever applied for in life.

00:56:52.380 The only job was mayor because you have to run for that. So that I stood up and said,

00:56:59.780 please vote for me. But every other job was handed to me. I was recruited out of law school to go to a

00:57:06.020 law firm. I ran, you know, I was city councilman and mayor for 10 years. And then NBC came to me

00:57:14.600 and said, when you terms up, anchor our news. And then the head of 10 years later, the head of the

00:57:21.260 news came, the head of the station came and said, we want you to do a talk show. And then because of

00:57:27.980 the talk show, NBC came and said, we want you to host America's Got Talent. We want you to do

00:57:34.440 dancing with the stars. We want, I mean, everything is, so that's luck. That is luck because I am just

00:57:43.720 like my friends, the friends I grew up with and the friends I had in high school and college were

00:57:48.340 still best buddies. And we're all alike. I'm not the funniest one among my friends. I'm not the smartest

00:57:53.820 one among my friends. It's like, how does all this happen? So when people say I made it on my own,

00:58:00.960 I'd say 99% of what we are, we had nothing to do with. There's not a person on earth that was

00:58:10.180 involved in the decision to be born, to whom you'd be born in what, in what era, in what country, to

00:58:15.860 what parents, to what health, to what mind, all of this is a gift. And if you just understand that,

00:58:24.240 and then you just say to yourself, I'm never going to judge someone based on what they are. I'll only

00:58:29.500 judge people based on what they do. Then, then the rest is easy. You don't get upset.

00:58:36.860 You know, it's like, Hey, what a ride I've had. And so I don't get upset about the quote,

00:58:43.720 little things. I mean, they really are little things. My family, they had it tough.

00:58:49.940 I want to get to that. I want to get to that in one minute. But before we get, before we go there,

00:58:53.540 let me ask you about, and tell me if you don't want to talk about this,

00:58:56.780 but there was an incident in which your luck ran out in the early seventies when you were on city

00:59:02.060 council. And as I understand it, you were caught paying for a hooker at a massage parlor. You

00:59:06.820 pulled a Bob craft. Um, yes. And that, that I'm sure it was humiliating. How did that affect you

00:59:13.760 at the time? Well, it was, uh, yeah, it was, it was humiliating, terribly embarrassing. I shouldn't

00:59:20.080 have done it. And, but no one knew that I did it when I, uh, held a press conference and announced

00:59:26.320 what I had done. I was just afraid of being blackmailed. And, uh, so I said, well, I've done

00:59:32.720 it. Well, I first resigned and then I explained why I did. And, uh, but then the next election,

00:59:39.580 I decided, well, let's see if people have me back and I won the election. And then the next election,

00:59:46.600 I was elected mayor. So basically my, it wasn't, you know, it happened so early in life and, you

00:59:55.740 know, it was 50 years ago, uh, 48 years ago. So it's like, it, if it happened, it just wasn't that

01:00:04.200 big of a deal. I mean, I was personally embarrassed and dealt with that, but I wasn't thinking in terms

01:00:11.160 of, oh, what's going to happen in my life. And, uh, you know, it just maybe because what I did was

01:00:18.380 clearly wrong and I shouldn't have done it. Um, it didn't strike me as, oh my God, I've gone out and

01:00:24.900 killed someone or, you know, it just, I never took it as that big a deal, except that I should stand up

01:00:33.700 and apologize for what I've done and be a hundred percent honest about it. And, and what happens

01:00:39.160 happened. I mean, it would be, it would be embarrassed for anybody to be on, um, in the

01:00:43.420 paper for that, especially a public figure, a politician, um, here in New York, sadly, there's

01:00:48.960 a culture at some, or at least there used to be some of these wall street firms that that's just

01:00:53.700 like a thing that you go in, you pay, they call it a rub and tug. You go in there for one of those

01:00:58.280 on your lunch hour. And it, I, like, I always was curious because a lot of the times these are

01:01:05.040 married guys. And I'm like, why, why would you do that when you're married? And it reminded me of

01:01:10.560 the Charlie Sheen quote, um, when somebody said like, why would you be going to hookers? You're

01:01:15.180 Charlie Sheen. You don't have trouble getting women. And he said, I don't pay them to sleep with me.

01:01:19.500 I pay them to go away. You know? And I wondered now that I have you, if you don't mind me asking,

01:01:25.500 why, why would you pay for that? You know, like, why not just go get a girl and hang out and,

01:01:29.760 you know, do it the old fashioned way? The honest answer is I have no idea. I mean,

01:01:33.860 there's no rational answer to it. It made no sense. It was wrong. I mean, you know, I just,

01:01:40.840 I mean, that's the honest answer. I can't think I can't, anything I say, I would be making up now.

01:01:46.660 You know, you do, I think part of the thing, you know, I grew up a little later than most people.

01:01:52.220 Um, I don't know. It was just a stupid thing is all I can say. There's no, there's no justification

01:01:58.720 for it. There's no rationale, but I can't tell you that it has, you know, been a weight. I mean,

01:02:04.340 obviously how lucky I've been the rest of my life. So. Okay. But you keep saying luck. I it's also,

01:02:10.600 it's also determination and hard work. I mean, if, if most guys caught in that situation as a public

01:02:16.920 figure would probably assume my political future is over and what kind of a job am I going to get

01:02:23.600 now that that's been out there publicly, you had a huge comeback. You after that is when, right.

01:02:30.220 When you became mayor at the youngest age ever, right. You were 33 at the time in Cincinnati.

01:02:34.480 I was out. That was after that. Well, I think there was some goodwill going in because

01:02:39.560 I least politically was, did very well in terms of winning elections. You know, I think people

01:02:47.120 honestly, uh, look, Cincinnati was Republican and I won as a liberal Democrat. I mean, I think people

01:02:53.140 just viewed me as their errant son. I used to say the only reason they voted for me so that,

01:02:57.320 so that they could keep an eye on me where I was. Um, you know, it, uh, so they, there was no real

01:03:05.100 anger. You know, it's, it's oftentimes the way you handle it, the way you respond, if you, you know,

01:03:12.240 who hasn't had someone, um, some kid in their family, let's say, or someone in their family that,

01:03:18.240 you know, you're scold and they did something wrong, but you don't stop loving them or you don't

01:03:23.820 stop. If it's your family, you don't stop loving them. Maybe it's your friend. You don't stop liking

01:03:27.480 your friend. But again, it is so long ago that I don't, you know, I'm trying to reconstruct now and I

01:03:33.940 can't even come up with a, you know, why. Well, right. It's been a lot of years, but I, I, I mean,

01:03:41.140 weirdly feel inspired by the fact that you picked yourself up and you got back out there and you

01:03:46.600 made it happen. You, you know, all of the, all of the success we've been discussing came post all of

01:03:51.840 that. Um, you know, you, you wound up running for governor that didn't, that didn't work out.

01:03:56.940 And that's when you went into news, um, that crazy time, Chicago versus Cincinnati during the same

01:04:02.700 timeframe. I think, well, I don't know if you lived in Chicago or if you were just visiting,

01:04:07.480 but I saw you, I moved to Chicago right after I finished law school. It was 1995. I lived there

01:04:13.880 till 1997 and I was living in a building called the North pier apartment tower, which was 474 North

01:04:21.460 Lake shore drive. It was basically right by Navy pier. And I came downstairs and there was like,

01:04:28.980 I can't remember what was going on, but it was like snowy outside. And it was just a beautiful day,

01:04:34.120 like winter day. And I come, I turn around the corner and it's like picturesque. And there was

01:04:39.340 a man standing there. All the doorman were men were staring at him. That man was Springer. And I thought,

01:04:45.900 Oh, it's exciting. Well, because I, yeah, I had a place. I had a place in, um,

01:04:54.400 the Hancock building. Oh yeah. It was not far away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and Oh,

01:05:02.900 right. What? Oh man. I forget. There was someone who, uh, he was on, sadly, he was on the, uh,

01:05:09.800 Saturday night live and, uh, died of a drug overdose. Chris Farley. Chris Farley. Right. He lived in the

01:05:16.760 building. And, uh, the day that they found him, I was, uh, I went to lunch, we were taping shows and

01:05:24.940 then I went to lunch and, uh, suddenly the news broke out that, um, uh, so, oh, the headline was

01:05:34.480 celebrity found dead in Hancock building. And so I didn't know anything about it. I'm just,

01:05:41.940 I'm walking back. There's a big crowd out there. And then when I get upstairs,

01:05:45.640 my phone back then, we had voicemail, you know, uh, answering machines. It was going crazy.

01:05:52.860 Oh, Jerry, are you, call, call. Are you, are you okay? Call. Because they immediately assumed

01:06:00.280 that it was me. They probably didn't, you know, I mean, people that I knew knew I lived there.

01:06:06.580 And, uh, so that was a frightening, but yeah, I lived in your neighborhood, I guess.

01:06:11.180 Yeah. Well, I remember I, so that building I lived in had 61 floors.

01:06:15.640 And I, when I moved in, I was on 19 and it had views of Lake Michigan. And I completely thought

01:06:21.400 I, I had arrived. I, my, my own newspaper headline for myself was young lawyer has Lake view. Boom.

01:06:29.760 You are such a loser. My view was the 91st floor.

01:06:36.520 Total loser. A hundred percent. And, but you know, who wasn't a loser? You know, who was not a loser

01:06:43.460 on the 61st floor of my building? Guess who had that higher floor? Uh, he was a big athlete. He was

01:06:51.800 huge Chicago star at the time. Again, this is 95 through 97, probably the, one of the biggest stars.

01:06:59.120 Nope. A different sport. Baseball. Oh, Cubs. Uh, Sammy Sosa. Yep. Yes. You got it. Oh, yes. Sammy

01:07:07.520 Sosa. And he was in the elevator one night. I came home after a few too many cocktails and we both get

01:07:14.220 on the elevator and I press 19 and he presses 61. I had some idea of who he was, but I, I wasn't a big

01:07:20.660 sports fan. Still, still I'm not, but he presses 61. I look at him and I was like, uh, you're high.

01:07:26.900 And he said, do you want to come up and take a look? I didn't go. Oh, maybe I should have gone.

01:07:39.080 Listen, I, we've got to talk. You mentioned it a couple of times when we talked about immigration

01:07:42.900 and your family's story. So what happened is, uh, my parents got married in 1933. They were German Jews.

01:07:50.780 And, uh, then, uh, then Hitler came in and, uh, they ultimately grabbed my grandparents, uncles,

01:07:59.500 aunts, cousins. We basically virtually the whole family was wiped out except mom and dad, mom and

01:08:07.720 dad got out of Germany in August of 1939. They managed to get, uh, a visa to get them to England. Um,

01:08:19.740 and they got it. When I say August of 39, it was the middle of August, so August 16, 17, something

01:08:26.960 like that. Two weeks later, September 1st, 1939, uh, Hitler goes into Poland to start World War II.

01:08:35.980 Well, um, and that is when the gates came down and Jews were no longer permitted of those who hadn't

01:08:45.020 been caught yet, but they weren't permitted to, uh, leave Germany. So according to the visa numbers,

01:08:52.320 my mom and dad were the 88th and 89th, uh, people, Jews left that were permitted to get out of Germany.

01:09:03.120 In other words, the numbers got cut off 89 people later. And, uh, they got to England where my sister

01:09:11.540 and I were born and then, um, 10 years late. So we were born during the war.

01:09:17.260 Is it true? You were born in the London tube?

01:09:20.260 Yeah. It wasn't strange at the time because the war was going on and women in the ninth month would

01:09:26.820 often spend a night in, um, in the subway tubes, uh, you know, the tunnels, cause those were bomb

01:09:33.220 shelters. And, um, um, and, but my sister was born, uh, in October 30th. So a month after my parents

01:09:40.680 got to work six weeks after my parents got to England, um, my sister was born. And then during

01:09:47.760 the war I was born. And then in 1949, when I was five, uh, my parents bought five tickets on the Queen

01:09:55.580 Mary and came over to America because they had lived through two world wars now and they thought

01:10:03.800 Europe would never be safe. And so they were lucky enough to get a visa to come to America,

01:10:09.980 which was difficult at the time too. We romanticize it. But the truth is, uh, America had pretty

01:10:17.300 restrictive immigration policies back then in terms of, um, you know, whether it was, uh, Jews or from

01:10:24.980 certain countries, et cetera, it was, you know, there was a real isolationist feeling and it was

01:10:31.860 difficult for immigrants, you know, certainly during the war and, um, even afterwards for some

01:10:37.860 time. But anyway, my parents got, and we lived, uh, the American dream. In other words, going by the

01:10:44.060 Statue of Liberty. I often tell the story of, uh, we were on the Queen Mary, which is the one memory I have

01:10:53.080 because, you know, for a little boy to be on the Queen Mary, which at the time was, I think the

01:10:59.220 largest ship in the world, or at least the second largest ship in the world. And, you know, it was

01:11:04.620 like, Oh my God, it was a city. And it was a five day journey from, um, England to New York Harbor.

01:11:12.420 You go by the Statue of Liberty. And I, my parents woke me up because they wanted Evelyn and me to

01:11:19.440 go out on deck and see the passing of this, you know, as we sailed by the Statue of Liberty.

01:11:26.040 And all I remember, this was January 24th, 1949. All I remember basically was that it was freezing cold.

01:11:37.900 And there were 2000 people packed together or watching the statue. And what I remember being

01:11:47.200 scared is that nobody talked. There was absolute silence. And it scared me as a little kid. I didn't

01:11:54.000 know what this was. All these people standing on a boat in a ship on freezing weather, staring at,

01:12:00.520 staring at something. And it was, and they were silent. In later years, my mom told me

01:12:06.080 about that journey. And she said, I had asked her, what are we looking at? And, you know,

01:12:13.120 what does that statue mean? And she said in the German, she spoke at the time,

01:12:17.600 one day it'll mean everything. So she, my parents really bought the American dream. And, you know,

01:12:26.240 my dad was a vendor. He sold stuffed animals, uh, on the, uh, beaches of, uh, New Jersey and New York

01:12:33.860 and on the boardwalks there. My mom was a clerk in a bank. And, uh, you know, we lived in a rent

01:12:41.820 controlled apartment in Kew Gardens until 1981, when my parents moved to Washington to be close

01:12:49.500 to my sister and they passed away five years later. But, uh, so that to see their kids grow up

01:12:58.500 and have the life I, you know, we were having, you know, to get us to college to, you know, but it was

01:13:07.400 interesting. So we, politics to us, wasn't just a, a hobby. It was real life. And I remember as a kid,

01:13:17.080 uh, and Evelyn does too, that we would at the dinner table every night, we would have to talk about one

01:13:23.540 thing we saw in the newspaper. And I was a little boy. So all I cared about is what the Yankees were doing.

01:13:28.680 Or, or the right, you know, sports. So every night I would talk about a sports thing, but I guess my

01:13:33.620 parents knew that at some point I would start reading other pages in the paper and, you know,

01:13:39.420 and then all the way through junior high and high school, it, you know, we started talking about

01:13:44.160 other things. And then of course came the, the sixties and, uh, and it was, you know, everyone was

01:13:51.100 going to Vietnam or whatever. And so it was impossible and the civil rights movement. So it, we became

01:13:57.000 pretty political with that. But, uh, so it was no one, it wasn't, I knew my parents said,

01:14:04.100 you're either going to law school or medical school, you know, it was the typical Jewish,

01:14:07.740 um, you know, culture kind of thing. And, you know, and I never thought about anything other

01:14:13.360 than I would be going to one of those schools. And since I was more interested in politics, I thought

01:14:19.100 law school would make more sense. I never really wanted to be a lawyer,

01:14:22.620 but, um, I thought law school made more sense than, uh, medical school for that. And then,

01:14:28.820 well, you know, the rest of the story. Well, to, uh, to end it on the same conciliatory note,

01:14:35.580 uh, that we began on, I love that looking at the statue of Liberty, what does she mean? One day,

01:14:43.720 everything. Um, I couldn't agree with that more. I think that's still the promise of America and a

01:14:49.860 place where anything is possible. Anything is still possible. Uh, Jerry Springer, you're living

01:14:55.360 proof of that. And it's an honor to talk to you. I, you're much more three-dimensional than, uh,

01:15:01.460 than I knew. And, uh, I love your story. Really love your story. Well, you, yeah, I am, you know,

01:15:07.900 as I told you, I think, you know, I am a fan period. So it's just exciting. I, you know, I kept

01:15:12.940 saying, well, next week I'm going to be talking to Megan. Yeah. That's sweet. Yeah. It's tomorrow. Yeah.

01:15:16.700 Yeah. So this is kind of exciting for us. Well, send my love to Mickey as well.

01:15:21.080 I will. Aren't you sweet. Thank you very much.

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01:15:41.500 we've been bringing you all new episodes this entire holiday season, and we will continue

01:15:46.100 to do that because we're not phoning it in on you. We want you to have new content.

01:15:51.280 Um, it's nice too. Sometimes when you're on vacation, you could go down the ski slope and

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01:15:58.600 And we're going to do that on our next show with Bridget Phetasy. Now, Bridget is an online

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01:16:07.800 in love with her. She's funny. She's a comedian. Uh, she's a social commentator and she's been,

01:16:13.500 you may have heard her on Shapiro or Ruben at Joe Rogan, but I, what I love about her

01:16:19.120 is she's very reasonable. She's much more in the middle than she is any place else.

01:16:24.040 She's sort of fiercely independent. She'll call out both sides. Um, but I think this is

01:16:28.760 going to be the most personal you've ever heard her get for sure. There were some very emotional

01:16:32.960 moments. And can I tell you there was a surprise announcement that is going to knock your socks

01:16:39.020 off. I cannot believe that she chose to do it on my show. I'm honored. And, uh, I think you're

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01:16:52.100 Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear. The Megyn Kelly show is a Devil May Care media production

01:16:59.980 in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 28, 2020

Jerry Springer on the American Dream, His TV Legacy, and Political Divisions ｜ Ep. 43

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