2020 Election: Trump camp calls on Fox News to retract Arizona call for Biden
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s campaign is heavily disputing Fox News’ decision to flip the swing state of Arizona to Joe Biden and has called on the network to retract the call.
Fox News’ decision desk called the Grand Canyon State for Biden just after 11 p.m. with 73 percent of the precincts reporting.
The Associated Press joined Fox News in calling Arizona for Biden at 2:52 a.m. Wednesday.
“WAY too soon to be calling Arizona…way too soon,” wrote Trump 2020 senior adviser Jason Miller, saying the campaign believed two-thirds of the outstanding votes will be going to Trump.
“Can’t believe Fox was so anxious to pull the trigger here after taking so long to call Florida. Wow,” he went on, noting that Fox waited until 98 percent of the vote was counted in the Sunshine State.
Miller said there were more than 1 million uncounted votes and accused the network of trying to “invalidate” them.
“@FoxNews should retract their call immediately,” he wrote, calling Fox an “outlier” and imploring other networks not to follow.
But Fox News decision desk director Arnon Mishkin stood by the call and said the outstanding votes were coming from Maricopa County, where Biden was in “very good standing.”
“I’m sorry, the president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate the seven-point lead the former vice president has,” Mishkin said shortly after 12:30 a.m., responding to pushback from the Trump campaign.
“We are four standard deviations from being wrong and I’m sorry, we’re not wrong in this case,” he said.
“We made the correct call and that’s why we made the correct call when we made it,” he went on.
Arizona’s GOP Gov. Doug Ducey also said the call had been made “far too early.”
“Election Day votes are not fully reported, and we haven’t even started to count early ballots dropped off at the polls,” he wrote on Twitter. “In AZ, we protected Election day. Let’s count the votes — all the votes — before making declarations.”
Ex-White House counselor and pollster Kellyanne Conway cast doubt on the call, sharing a tweet from ABC15 data analyst Garrett Archer that read: “Trump is typically gaining votes 2 to 1 on updates right now.”
Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also questioned the decision in an interview.
“I’m still not sure if that was a premature call. I think there’s some people that still think that might have been a little bit early,” Sanders told Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt brushed off criticism and said they “stood firm” on the early Arizona call, telling Baier they had explored all the angles and decided a Trump win there wasn’t possible.
Trump has put up a big fight for the battleground state, its 10 electoral votes, and vulnerable GOP Senate seat — which was ultimately lost on election night — hosting a pair of in-person rallies there last week.