Is it any surprise that CNN, the home of saturation coverage and interminable countdown clocks, would try to wring more airtime out of the debates? The first pair, hosted by NBC News in June, smashed ratings records for the Democratic primaries. They were the hit of the summer, the biggest thing on TV since Daenerys Targaryen went negative on King’s Landing.

Now CNN would get “Game of Podiums,” albeit only for two nights. But … what if there was a third?

So CNN spun one out of thin, hot air. It concocted what the historian Daniel Boorstin , writing in “The Image,” termed a “pseudo-event” — though in the quaint 1960s, Boorstin was writing about publicity firms passing off stunts to news outlets, not news outlets passing off stunts to us.

So CNN’s panel spent several excited segments speculating about a drawing that the network controlled and could have completed before the first ad break. “This is the luck of the draw, literally,” Gloria Borger informed us. John King broke out his magic screen to highlight potential matchups by scrawling the word “Vs.” Wolf Blitzer added whatever quotient of this-is-big-news-because-Wolf-Blitzer-is-here that his presence implies.

It was a rare chance to see a network generate punditry and render it useless in real time. When the drawing was two-thirds done, CNN’s political director, David Chalian, declared, “Tuesday night is going to be moderate night!” Then, left-leaning Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were added to the lineup, and suddenly it wasn’t.

This wasn’t covering the news. This was manufacturing the news, while commenting on the dexterity and suspense with which CNN was creating it. It was political journalism as Penn & Teller act.