If former President Donald Trump has proven anything, it’s that we still aren’t ready for the era of instantaneous communication .

Trump has once again, and with almost no effort whatsoever, created a weeklong news event focused entirely on himself, capturing completely the attention of Congress as well as the news and entertainment industries.

Any day now, Trump will be charged in Manhattan and arrested over alleged hush money payments he made to porn star and onetime mistress Stormy Daniels. Or so we’re told. No one outside of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has any clue what’s happening. No one knows what the charges would even be, let alone whether the former president will be arrested. But an absence of hard information has not discouraged major newsrooms and members of the most powerful deliberative body in the world from dropping everything to focus exclusively on the rumored Trump indictment. These people eat this slop as quickly as it's shoveled out.

How did we even get here? As it so happens, this particular episode starts with Fox News, which reported last week an unsubstantiated claim from an anonymous source supposedly within the Manhattan DA’s Office.

“We are learning that the Manhattan DA’s office has asked for a meeting with law enforcement ahead of a potential Trump indictment,” anchor John Roberts said on March 17. “The meeting, which was requested yesterday and has not been set yet, is to discuss logistics for some time next week, which would mean that they are anticipating an indictment next week.”

“Secret Service will take the lead in what they will allow or will not allow, the source cautioned, mentioning, for instance, that the decision to handcuff the president, a former president or not, they will set the tone and will escort him into the courtroom,” Roberts added. “The source believes that the former president will still have to be fingerprinted and processed like every other defendant. So, this is a huge development.”

Huge indeed. The allegedly forthcoming indictment immediately became the lead story in every newsroom. It immediately dominated the discourse on social media. And then Trump himself contributed directly to the already out-of-control rumor mill: On March 18, the former president announced he would be arrested on Tuesday.

“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” the former president said on social media, presumably shouting. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

The press has responded exactly as you’d expect, gorging itself silly at a trough replenished constantly by Trump, his allies, and his enemies.

On March 19, the major Sunday talk shows, including ABC News’s This Week, CBS News’s Face the Nation, NBC News’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union, dedicated a combined 47 minutes to the indictment rumor.

“Here’s What Will Happen If Trump Is Arrested (Yes, He’ll Probably Get A Mugshot),” promised one particularly tantalizing Forbes headline.

“The walls are closing in,” declared MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, apparently unaware he and his cohort have uttered this exact phrase at least 1,000 times since 2016.

“N.Y. Authorities Prepare for Unprecedented Arrest of an Ex-President,” the New York Times reported on March 20. Its subhead adds, “Ahead of a likely indictment, law enforcement officials are making security plans as some of Donald J. Trump’s supporters signal that they intend to protest.”

On MSNBC, former Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki said of Trump’s response to the indictment rumor, “What we're seeing here with Donald Trump calling for people to protest, targeting the Manhattan DA, that is what you see in authoritarian countries."

"The reason why people are so outraged in Israel at Netanyahu is because of his attempts to, his desire to overhaul the judiciary," she added. "And there are so many cases of this happening around the world. His behavior and what he's doing here is more like Putin. It's more like Netanyahu than it is like a leader that we would historically see in the United States."

MSNBC host Joy Reid added, "I think Netanyahu is tied. They're very tight. They both don't seem to be too mad at a little violence against a minority group, in this case, the Palestinians in Israel, uh, Palestine.”

The indictment rumor has captured the imagination of not just social media and legacy media. Members of Congress have also lost themselves in the story, with Republicans vowing action against the Manhattan DA’s Office, even though it is highly unlikely they have the authority to challenge a locally elected official, and Democrats criticizing Republicans for attempting to interfere in a state matter.

"This president has conducted himself in a way that he does not deserve not to be arrested," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said. "He should be arrested. He should be indicted, and the charges that he's been indicted on are minimal as opposed to the charges that believe he could have been indicted on."

"I don't know what is going to happen," she added. "When he announces himself, it is almost like he is attempting to organize his domestic terrorists to show up and resist him being arrested. You have to be careful with him. ... I just wanted to have you to understand that perhaps he was trying to organize domestic terrorists to protest his arrest, and I think we have to be careful about him making that announcement. He is doing it for a reason."

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said, “We don't think President Trump broke the law at all.”

The representative added, “President Trump announces he’s running for president and shazam! Some bookkeeping error from seven years ago, [this] misdemeanor is now what they're going after." Jordan and two other House GOP committee chairs have even requested testimony from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg concerning his Trump investigation.

Then Tuesday came and went. There was no arrest. Then Wednesday, and then Thursday. No arrest. It is now Saturday, March 25, and Trump has still not been arrested or indicted.

Eight days straight of media speculation and commentary, intracongressional squabbling, posturing and threats between the Left and the Right, and we’ve nothing to show for it. Nothing, that is, except for an increasingly deranged former president’s increasingly deranged social media posts.

“What kind of person can charge another person,” Trump wrote on Friday, “in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?"

He added, "Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!”

All this — the headlines, the wall-to-wall-commentary, the rallying of partisan armies, the congressional threats and infighting, the breathless commentary, the assurances of victory and defeat — from a single anonymously sourced Fox News report.

Let's propose a new reporting rule for the era of instantaneous information: We cover Trump-related events only when or after they occur. All this endless speculation is a waste of time and energy. All these people worked up and angry over something that hasn’t even happened. It’s harmful and it’s dangerous. And it has been like this since at least 2015! Before the indictment, it was Russian collusion. Just an endless torrent of fantasy and gossip, and all of it for nothing except for the further Balkanization of the country.

This isn’t to say we should ignore the former president or his disturbing rants. He’s still a noteworthy figure who might just be the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. One cannot simply ignore a former U.S. president as he continues his face-first descent into madness, threatening violence and destruction should his political enemies find a legal foothold against him.

On the other hand, even if Trump were just a little more even-keeled and soft-spoken, the media and political feeding frenzy would happen anyway. The press and politicos would continue to hang onto his every word and related deed because here’s the dirty secret: He’s great for ratings. He’s great for fundraising. Trump’s great precisely because he feeds that American appetite for spectacle.

He’s not some unique disease. Trump is just a symptom. He’s exactly the type of person we deserve at the moment. Should it be any wonder that a man of such low character and disordered passions should rise so high among a people so hopelessly addicted to rumor, innuendo, fantasy, and gossip?

This is why we need new (or at least stricter) reporting rules for the era of instant communication. Trump and his critics play too easily to what sells, and we just eat it up like starved animals. These stories ping-pong around the corners of the countries, with everyone drawing battle lines before anyone has any clear idea of what's actually happening. This flooding the zone with a constant barrage of Trump-related rumors, theories, and speculation — it's clearly not healthy.

As members of a supposedly responsible public and commentariat, let’s save some of this energy for things that have actually happened. Otherwise, it's just a loss of time and effort and a whole lot of ignorance and emotion thrown around in every direction. We already have that in Trump. We don't need the rest of the country to follow suit.

Becket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and National Review. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.