Why has this question not been asked?

I am begging the next journalist who has an opportunity to ask Pauline Hanson a very simple and direct question: who won the 2020 US Presidential election?

This isn't a "gotcha", or a trivial personal interest question, this could be the most revealing question about the woman who wants to be our Prime Minister.

Because it is an objective fact that Joe Biden won that election, and it is a demonstrable truth that there was no widespread instances of voter fraud that impacted the result in any way.

We know this because the Trump campaign filed more than 60 court cases regarding the election, many before Trump appointed judges, without a single finding in their favour.

Trump's former Attorney-General, Vice-President, Defence Secretary, and even his Press Secretary, all conceded that Trump lost, fair and square.

And when the subject of Trump's baseless conspiracy theories, Dominion Voting Machines, sued Fox News for broadcasting the false claims of Trump's campaign, Fox was forced to pay Dominion $787.5 million, primarily because internal communication showed that even the most committed pro-Trump hosts knew the whole thing was a lie.

Trump now has hand-picked sycophants in charge of the Justice Department, the FBI, and DNI, and has ruthlessly demanded the investigation and prosecution of his political enemies. If there was a shred of evidence of impropriety regarding the 2020 election, it would have been placed upon one of Trump's infamous cardboard placards in the Oval Office by now.

Yet... Trump made a genuine attempt to override the results of the election and hold on to power. It's unfathomable how so many people seem to look past this. He tried to reject the will of the American people and hold on to power illegally.

Trump urged senior Justice Department officials to publicly state that the election was corrupt, even though department leadership had concluded there was no evidence of outcome-changing fraud.

At one point he considered replacing the acting Attorney General with Jeffrey Clark, who was more willing to support these efforts. It was only when Senior DOJ officials threatened mass resignations that Trump ultimately backed down.

On 2 January 2021, Trump was recorded on a phone call asking the Republican Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger: "So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break... So look. All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state."

Similar pressure campaigns were directed at officials in states such as Arizona and Michigan.

Trump then organised for groups of people in seven states won by Biden to sign certificates claiming they were the legitimate presidential electors, and then have these "alternate" electors presented to Congress on January 6, despite the official electors already having been certified by those states.

Trump and his personal lawyer, John Eastman, then argued that Pence could refuse to count certified electoral votes or delay certification. An illegal act that Pence refused to partake in, hence the chants of "Hang Mike Pence" from the radicalised mob of rioters that Trump urged to march towards the Capital Building and prevent Pence from certifying the verified election results.

This mob then stormed the Capital Building as Trump watched on in silence. It was a genuine and deadly attempt at violent insurrection; an unforgivable act of treason for which every offender has since been pardoned by Trump.

But the greatest injury inflicted by Trump during this sorry saga is the manner in which he has irreversibly poisoned the trust of the American people in their democratic institutions.

About one-third of Americans believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election or that the election was "stolen" or decided by significant fraud. This is an almost irrecoverable festering wound for US democracy, and I'm genuinely not sure how a country so polarised can stabilise when so many have been convinced that elections can't be trusted.

Yet... Pauline and her handler, Gina Rinehart, are unapologetic Trump supporters. Giving a speech at Trump's Mar-a-Lago palace, Hanson likened her own prosecution for electoral fraud in 2003 to the Justice Department's investigations into Trump for his role in attempting to subvert US democracy, saying:

"Donald Trump and I have a lot in common in many ways. I actually was imprisoned for my political views, wrongfully imprisoned... they were after Donald Trump as well, but they never got him imprisoned. So I'm grateful it never happened to a great man as Donald Trump."

This is where Australians must understand about the state of mind and character of the person that swarms of foreign controlled bot farms are insisting should be our next Prime Minister.

Because if she is asked, we are really only left with two unsettling answers:

Either Hanson rejects the reality of what occurred in 2020, adding to a list of frankly insane conspiracy theories parroted by the One Nation leader (such as the Port Arthur massacre being a false flag attack by the government to seize people's guns, that the AEC was rubbing out votes on ballots that used pencils instead of pens in the 2022 election, and even introducing a motion in the Senate warning about the World Economic Forum's "Great Reset").

Or... she knows the "rigged election" claims are a lie, but she doesn't care. She believes that the MAGA political movement, to which she now belongs, is more important than democracy itself. The party that was caught red handed by Al Jazeera promising Republican donors they could change Australia's voting system for $20 million... may not be opposed to subverting our democracy if it brings them power.

Either of those answers, in my view, are far more disqualifying than any of her immigration policies or racist diatribes.

So please... someone ask her the question. This is what all of us need to be urgently discussing before it's too late.