Conservative columnist Mollie Hemingway has written a book exposing how President Joe Biden won the presidential election, entitled Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. Hemingway goes over all the suspicious behavior and possible fraud that occurred, including Fox News — the allegedly conservative news station — calling the race in Arizona early for Biden, before any other network did.
“[T]he rush to call a critical battleground such as Arizona less than ninety minutes after the polls closed [was] very odd,” Hemingway wrote. Acknowledging that she is a contributor to Fox News, she explained how it was Fox News’ Decision Desk that made the call, “Fox News … is unique among cable networks in retaining a distinction between its opinion and news programming. The news side handles Election Night and other big coverage. Its Decision Desk, a group of pollsters, statisticians, and political analysts, is independent from both the opinion and news programming.”
Arizona Gov. Ducey was so surprised by the early call that he tweeted shortly afterward, “It’s far too early to call the election in Arizona. Election Day votes are not fully reported, and we haven’t even started to count early ballots dropped off at the polls. In AZ, we protected Election Day. Let’s count the votes — all the votes — before making declarations.”
Disturbed about the early call, anchor Bret Baier asked Arnon Mishkin, Fox’s main statistician at the Decision Desk, who normally stays off air, “Are you 100 percent sure of that call, and when you made it? And why did you make it?” Miskin, a longtime Democratic strategist, said the remaining ballots were mostly mail-in ballots from Maricopa County that would lean Democrat.
“I’m sorry, the president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that seven-point lead that the former vice president has,” Mishkin said.
Baier also called the Decision Desk’s Chris Stirewalt on air to question him about it. “How can you call Arizona, but we can’t call Ohio?” he asked. Stirewalt said the races were too different, there was too much ground to be made up in Arizona for Trump to win.
Whereas about Ohio, Stirewalt said, “There is just too much vote out, and there’s too much potentially heavily Democratic mail vote that may flop in at the end to get too froggy right now with Ohio. We’re going to be careful, cautious, and earnest.” Biden ended up winning Arizona by .3 points. Trump won Ohio by 8.2 points.
Fox News fired Stirewalt in January 2021 in a “post-election restructuring.” He had been with the network for over a decade. Inside sources told The Daily Mail that the network was purging people biased against Trump.
Stirewalt published an op–ed after the firing bashing Fox News and others on the right without naming the network, “The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying.” He went on, “The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.”
After Fox News called the election early for Biden in Arizona, its viewership dropped substantially, with conservatives switching to Newsmax or OAN. Within a few days after the election, the network lost almost 40 percent of its viewers. Almost a year later, while the network is still outperforming its left-leaning rivals, it is still down about 30 percent in viewers.
As of August, Newsmax is up 231 percent in viewers from two years ago. Viewership has increased steadily all year.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Fox News Arizona Early Call” by American Politics.
