The world on edge.

A pandemic threatens from across the globe.

The stock market nosedives and wipes out the year’s gains in one day.

This mysterious new virus out of China is — literally — a matter of life and death. A matter of life and death that — literally — threatens America’s national security as well as global markets.

Entire cities in China with tens of millions of people are quarantined.

Still, the virus spreads at an exponential rate. More than 100 people are already dead.

So, let’s toodle on over to the United States Senate, widely known as — literally — the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” and see what they are discussing and devising to protect our country from the threatened pandemic.

You know, let’s just see what they are grandly debating about how to prepare for this threat of disease, poverty and mayhem the likes of which you only see in zombie movies.

Bombshell! Thunderbolt! Earthquake!

Well, this is promising. At least they are taking it all very seriously.

Oh, wait. No they are not.

Upon closer inspection, the “bombshell” is actually the “Bolton bombshell,” which has actually become a moniker on cable television channel since paraphrased passages from a book by former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton supposedly leaked to The New York Times.

Democrats and the media — not to repeat myself — are breathlessly wetting themselves over the “bombshell” that keeps going off.

And the “Bolton thunderbolt.” Yes, that, too. I think it refers to the same concussion.

But why are all these Democrats in such convulsions of ecstasy over passages of a book written by a former advisor to President Trump?

Ah, he’s a turncoat. Of course!

Mr. Bolton served President Trump in the White House. He quit. And now he has written a book about his “service” in the White House. And, according to The New York Times, Mr. Bolton provides the final nail of proof in Mr. Trump’s impeachment coffin.

Breathless wags in Washington come clicking mindlessly out of their cuckoo clocks.

“This is seismic!”

“Bombshell!”

“Game changer!”

No. No, it’s not.

This is actually what you call “wishful thinking” and “hysteria.” Oh, and “desperation” to turn this criminally boring impeachment into something the average innocent American citizen actually cares about.

Truth is, the vast majority of Americans could not tell Mr. Bolton from Captain Kangaroo. (Upon further reflection, perhaps it is only appropriate that Captain Kangaroo be called before the kangaroo court that has taken over the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.”)

But that does not mean you should actually believe this supposed paraphrased “testimony” from Mr. Bolton.

First, we don’t even actually know what is in Mr. Bolton’s book. So, it is yet another game of telephone. Just like all the other ridiculous, inadmissible, hearsay nonevidence from all of the hysterical nonwitnesses in the whole nonimpeachment saga.

“But neither John Bolton nor his publisher has denied The New York Times’ characterization of the passages in Mr. Bolton’s book!”

Oh my goodness did these morons just fall off the back of the turnip truck?

Of course they are not going to dispute the supposedly leaked paraphrased passages! Those made-up passages are selling the hottest unpublished book in the world right at the moment! If they disputed them then the stupid book would drop like a cold stone.

This is how people make huge amounts of money around here. They ink million-dollar contracts to write books about their access to power.

And the more salacious the kiss-and-tell, the more money the turncoat gets to write it.

But it would probably be wise at this moment to remember that kiss-and-tell books are notoriously unreliable. Not only is the author compromised by the money he got paid to tell the most sensational story he could think up, but he is also compromised by the mere fact that he turned on his former boss in the first place.

Add to that the fact that Mr. Bolton has been around Washington for a very long time. He is perhaps the most experienced foreign hand in the Republican Party. There is not a war we are in that doesn’t have his fingerprints all over it.

There are few people more ingrained in Washington — precisely the type of person Mr. Trump got elected to drain out of here.

I, myself, cannot wait to hear what Mr. Bolton has to say about his time in the Trump White House. I am sure it was a very disturbing time for him. I am certain President Trump said and did many things that appalled Mr. Bolton and made him feel very uncomfortable.

Which is, of course, precisely what Mr. Trump got elected to do.

⦁ Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com and on Twitter on @charleshurt.