Donald Trump: The once and future president?

You probably heard it reported a few weeks ago that Donald Trump has been telling confidants that he expects to be reinstated as president in August. I have no way of knowing if that story is accurate, nor does New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, who reported it, but we do know that Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, has boasted that he has evidence of election fraud that will force the Supreme Court to unanimously overturn the Nov. 3 election and put Trump back in power within six weeks.

No doubt that is far-fetched, but it raises the fascinating theoretical question of what would happen if a presidential election were indeed proven to be stolen. What would be the recourse? Or would the nation just have to accept its illegitimate ruler the way they do in corrupt Third World countries?

Mind you, this is hypothetical only, so Facebook and Twitter and any other Big Tech tyrants have no reason to censor or suppress this line of inquiry. It is what educators used to encourage in their students — critical thinking, looking at an issue from all sides and without preconditions in order to form a judgment.

But critical thinking is in short supply in 21st century America. Instead, we have either orthodoxy or heresy. Of course, the New York Times can write whatever it wants in the way of fantastic stories about the Nov. 3 election, because it writes stories that ridicule Trump and his claims of election fraud. But for those of us who respond to the Times or other left-leaning news outlets, the same rules don’t apply.

Last week, for instance, I reprinted a story by RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry on my own website about the evidence for election fraud in Georgia. When I posted it to Facebook with a comment praising Sperry’s work as clear evidence why a forensic election audit is vital, the post was shut down. I was told it “goes against [Facebook’s] community standards,” with no further explanation.

Apparently asking questions about elections goes against Facebook’s standards, which suggests that Facebook’s standards have more in common with the Chinese Communist Party than with the U.S. Constitution. Asking questions — about anything and everything — is what journalists are paid to do, and what informed citizens must do. You don’t accept anything the government tells you at face value. You test it, you probe it, you prove it…

So, with your critical-thinking hat on, imagine how you would address the problem — hypothetical only — of what to do if it became obvious that the sitting president were not duly elected. Let’s say that evidence surfaced showing that China tampered with the election in order to oust Trump. What does the Supreme Court do?