Kurt Volker, the former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, testified on Capitol Hill Thursday for nearly 10 hours. He was one of the first witnesses deposed in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. (More on that below.)

I’m pretty sure that if our brave men and women at Gitmo interrogated a jihadist for ten hours, the left would be yelling that it was torture. But that didn’t stop Democrats from interrogating Volker for ten hours.

And, of course, they did it behind closed doors, presumably because they were touching on classified subjects. Or maybe they just didn’t want the American people to hear what Volker had to say. I suspect it was the latter because Republicans came out of the hearing unfazed.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told reporters that “not one thing [Volker] said comports with any of the Democrats’ impeachment narrative. Not one thing.”

Rep. Adam Schiff left the hearing and told reporters that he had no comment. Schiff’s silence speaks volumes. If Volker’s testimony had been damaging to Trump, Schiff would have had plenty to say.

Pelosi’s Charade

The White House is expected to notify Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it will provide nothing in response to the Democrats’ subpoena blitz until there is an actual vote by the full House authorizing formal impeachment proceedings.

Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, is also telling a federal court that demands by the Judiciary Committee to access grand jury testimony from Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation are illegal because the House has not yet authorized formal impeachment proceedings.

As Andrew McCarthy, Mark Levin, Newt Gingrich and others have pointed out, there is no impeachment process going on right now. There is no impeachment process because the speaker of the House refuses to call a vote on the rules governing the process as has been done in every other formal impeachment.

What we have is a political charade where Nancy Pelosi is making up her own rules as she goes along.

The purpose of this charade is to damage the president, demoralize his supporters and scare independent voters into thinking there is something seriously wrong with the Trump Administration.

By avoiding the vote, Pelosi is also shielding 31 House Democrats who hold seats Trump won in 2016 from having to vote on impeachment, which is really a vote to reverse the 2016 election.

The other advantage for Pelosi is that House Republicans don’t have the benefit of additional tools that would help them defend the president during a formal impeachment process.

Trump, Biden & China

On Thursday, President Trump said that China should be investigating Hunter Biden’s $1.5 billion business deal. Of course, the media immediately went into a complete meltdown. And I know some Republicans were frustrated he said that.

But the reason he said it is very important. He cannot allow the left and the media to convince the American people that it is somehow against the law for the president to pursue corruption that has occurred in the past when those accused are political opponents of the president.

If weak-kneed Republicans allow that idea to become accepted as fact, then the Deep State probe being conducted by Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham must be ended immediately.

Barr and Durham are looking at how the Obama Administration weaponized our intelligence agencies, along with foreign intelligence services, to surveil the Trump campaign and accept dirt from foreign sources in order to take down the duly elected president of the United States.

Consider this: If Joe Biden does poorly in Iowa next year and drops out of the race, would the president then be allowed to investigate corruption in the Biden family? The left’s absurd narrative suggests it would be okay to investigate Biden then, but not now. In what world does that make any sense?

Hillary Clinton appears to be deeply involved in the 2016 conspiracy to take down the president with false information. She is not running for anything yet. Can the president investigate Hillary and whether she was working with Brennen, Clapper, the Obama White House and Ukraine?

Candidates routinely run for office on the platform of cleaning up corruption. Trump made “draining the swamp” a central element of his 2016 campaign. It’s a very popular position to take.

But are we now supposed to believe that candidates who vow to clean up corruption can’t seek information from foreign countries where the corruption extended if the people under investigation happen to be political opponents?

When it comes to Hunter Biden’s business dealings, there are a lot questions that demand answers.

For example, Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wants to know why the Obama Administration signed off on a deal involving Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz (John Kerry’s stepson) and a Chinese government-owned company that had previously stolen technology related to the newest generation of stealth fighters.

Can Fox Be Fixed?

As you probably know, the president has complained recently about what he has seen lately on Fox News. I have also heard from many supporters who are unhappy with the messaging on the supposedly “fair and balanced” network.

While some hosts including my friends Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson remain strong conservatives, it is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish the difference between Fox’s daytime hosts and other left-wing networks.

But recently the dean of conservative media, the man who broke the left’s stranglehold over the media, Rush Limbaugh blasted Fox, saying, “You know, Fox really ought to change the name of the network from the Fox News Channel to the Fox Never Trumper Network.”

Going Strong

Friday’s jobs report shows that the economy is still going strong even as pundits and left-wing politicians keep hoping for a recession. The unemployment rate fell to a 50-year low of just 3.5%. Job growth in September came in at 139,000 new jobs. That was slightly short of expectations, but the previous two months were revised upward by 45,000.

What a contrast: Job creation under Trump versus every progressive/socialist seeking to replace him and their radical job-killing ideas.