Trump’s non-candidacy tests the traditional view at news organizations that political journalists are the gatekeepers, the arbiters of which candidates deserve serious attention by virtue of their fundraising, their endorsements and the strength of their ideas. Trump is making a mockery of all that. The attention he gets shows the media just can’t help themselves when high Web traffic and ratings get into the mix. And it seems both the celebrity-businessman and the journalists are in on the joke.

At a gathering of Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa over the weekend, both ABC News and NBC News held interviews with Trump in which they asked him to dish on Hillary Clinton, the Republican field, and his own 2016 ambitions. Trump’s claim that he would spend “whatever it took” to win the White House was picked up by several media outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post and POLITICO, which gives Trump regular and ample coverage, like many other outlets. In the last week alone, Trump’s name has been mentioned at least 200 times on cable news, up from 87 times the week before, according to the search database TV Eyes.

“Trump correctly has surmised that political reporters in general are easy marks and he probably can’t believe how easy it is to find folks willing to cover his antics,” Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director and chief White House correspondent, told POLITICO. “I am generalizing, but [he] is always able to find just enough political reporters who have editors who think, ‘We know he is not serious but his outrageousness will mean more clicks!’”