Conservative radio host Ben Ferguson Friday likened the violence that led to a cancelled Donald Trump rally in Chicago to a reality television show and charged that "Donald Trump is the one who has built this fire."
"He's been doing it week after week at rally after rally," Ferguson, host of "The Ben Ferguson Show" who supports rival Ted Cruz, told Don Lemon on CNN. "He didn't throw the match tonight on the fire; the protesters did that.
"The protesters absolutely went there to get into a scuffle," he said. "They accomplished that and they wanted to cancel the event.
But "make no mistake about it, the reason we're seeing it only at Donald Trump's rallies and at no one else's rallies is because he's the one that built this fire," Ferguson said. "He made it ready to go and to light it and torch it."
Trump said he cancelled the rally at the University of Illinois-Chicago out of security concerns. The move led to sometimes violent skirmishes between supporters and protesters, requiring large numbers of local police to be called in.
He later told Fox News that he
scrapped the rally because "I don't want to see people hurt."
Ferguson hit Trump on "presidential leadership, or the lack thereof" and called Friday's violence "reality TV."
"When you put a reality TV star in a situation where he's running for president, you're going to get a reality TV show," he told Lemon. "That what we are watching right now.
"This is great for ratings of Donald Trump. This is great for his supporters.
"This is going to galvanize his support, but do you want someone like this running the United States of America?" he asked. "And that is the question that people have to look at tonight."
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