Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Freddie Gray and this week we'll be talking lights, camera, politics.

Anybody who watched the presidential TV debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Sunday night was left suspended in a state of disbelief.

Were we watching a serious exchange

between two aspiring leaders of the free world? Or was it a reality TV show in which we, the audience,

were watching purely to be titillated by a vulgar row about who the most awful person was?

In his cover piece this week, Douglas Murray suggests that in America, trash showbiz TV has

taken over politics. I'm here with Douglas Murray, and down the line is Zaniel Wicket, who is

director of the US project at Chatham House. So, Douglas, how has it come to pass that

Stakecraft has become a branch of reality TV, as you put it? Well, obviously the linchpin of this is the Republican

nominee for president, Donald Trump, who has come to prominence in recent years very largely

because of his role running the apprentice, starring in the Apprentice TV show, one should say,

and this has given an allure of competence and brilliance and indeed toughness to somebody

who is now using that in politics.

But what I tried to explain in my piece is that there's a whole realm beneath that,

a most obvious public realm of politics and political discourse in the US,

which I think we have a little bit of here.

But in the US has really become a we have a little bit of here, but in the US has really

become a terrible beast. It is the replacement of politics and political debate with

applications for prime time showbiz. And for this you blame not just the media, but actually

society ourselves, for finding it so titillating for finding the punch and judy politics yeah we

can't uh wean ourselves off it it seems the debates are are so engrossing they're so base they're so

low they're so brutal that we love it and we hate ourselves for loving it sania do you agree with

...