Fox News Defends Calling Arizona For Biden After Pushback From Trump Team
Fox News said just after midnight Eastern time that stood by the projection.
11/04/2020 01:42 AM EST
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Fox News Channel is defending its decision late Tuesday to call Arizonas 11 electoral votes for Joe Biden amid criticism from President Donald Trumps campaign that the decision was premature.
The network was the first and only news organization to declare a winner in Arizona and make it the first red-to-blue flip on the electoral map. But Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller soon responded, tweeting that Fox News is a complete outlier in calling Arizona, and other media outlets should not follow suit.
Miller said the campaign believed that about two-thirds of the votes outstanding that were cast on Tuesday will be for Trump. There are still 1M+ Election Day votes out there waiting to be counted we pushed our people to vote on Election Day, but now Fox News is trying to invalidate their votes!, Miller wrote.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Liz Harrington was also blunt about the call, tweeting, Retract AZ!
Despite The Polls Trump Could Win In 2020
Stranger things have happened
In our article two weeks ago, we noted that, despite common perception, the 2016 polls were surprisingly accuratein both the national polls, as well as State polls. They underestimated Trump in seven polls and underestimated Hillary in five. Even in those, they were within the stated margin of error. Only two states were outside the normal rangeand only one of them significantly went to Trump instead of Hillary. That was Wisconsin.
Even so, theres the perception that polls were wrong in 2016, and theres suspicion that they will be proven wrong again this year. All the swing states are in the Biden column this year, and Biden has been consistently ahead in the national polls by no less than four percent. In 2016, the polls varied wildly, with Trump even taking the lead in the average of polls a couple of times.
In fact, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said on Fox that Biden has been shown so far ahead for so long that if Trump were to win, my profession is done!
However, there are a few pollsters who are bucking the trend, and say that Trump will win this year. We earlier mentioned Insider Monkey, but there are more.
Robert Cahaly, Chief pollster at The Trafalgar Group, spoke with Fox News, and told Guy Benson that all the other polls are wrong.
The Hill says Cahaly sees a close race, but a Trump win, because of what has been called the, shy Trump voter.
Another is the number of questions.
Also, how people are contacted.
Fox News Host Says If Trump Wins ‘there Will Be Blood Everywhere’
Greg Gutfield, co-host of Fox News show The Five, has said that the results of November’s ballot could cause widespread unrest if the Democrats don’t win.
In a segment on Thursday, he took on the media, which he says has portrayed the election as “good versus evil” and that if President Donald Trump wins, Democrat supporters would take to streets and vent their anger.
The quote
“I hope that…they win the Senate, the house and the presidency, because in that way, I won’t be murdered because if Biden loses. I am being told that there will be blood everywhere, there will be riots, there will be demonstrations, people like me will be targeted.
“The Dems in the media have portrayed this election as good versus evil…which means that if Trump wins…it is almost required that the good take to the streets and punish the evil” he added, blaming the media for promoting anti-Trump rhetoric.
Why it matters
The unrest across the U.S. following the killing in custody of George Floyd has thrown open the doors to a debate about racial injustice and police brutality that will be a key plank of the election campaign.
Trump has taken aim at Democratic leaders in cities such as Portland and Kenosha and presented himself as the candidate of law and order. He tweeted on Thursday that if he didn’t win, “America’s Suburbs will be OVERRUN with Low Income Projects, Anarchists, Agitators, Looters and, of course, “Friendly Protesters.”
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Pirates Victory In Friendly Match Features Newly
In a friendly game, the Pirates won thanks to a new player who scored a goal.A new player for the Orlando Pirates stole the show after scoring a hat trick in a big preseason win for the Soweto giants over the weekend.The Buccaneers played against the Eswatini heavyweights Mbabane Highlanders at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on Sunday.
Evidence Makgopa Can Be In The Orlando Pirates’ Bid For League Title
Orlando Pirates is one of the big and best clubs in the continent of Africa, the South African-based football club is also one of the most successful clubs in South Africa.The Buccaneers secured the league title with a 42 win against Golden Arrows on 19 May 2012 since then the buccaneers haven’t won the league and it’s been a decade.
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First Amendment News And Insights From Mtsu
In this April 19, 2017, file photo, a security guard looks out of the the News Corp. headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
Fox News role in promoting the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump cost the network one of its most respected journalists, Chris Wallace. Wallace told The New York Times recently that he jumped to CNN because I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox.
Now the question is whether Foxs post-election programming will also cost the media empire millions, if not billions, of dollars in legal judgments.
Two voting-systems companies, Dominion and Smartmatic, have filed defamation lawsuits against Fox and the hosts who amplified false assertions made by Trumps legal team in the weeks after the election. Two judges have rejected Foxs motions to have the lawsuits dismissed. First Amendment attorneys are closely monitoring the cases, which, unless they are settled out of court, have the potential to break new ground in libel law.
For the purposes of these lawsuits, Dominion and Smartmatic are expected to be deemed the equivalent of public figures, meaning that they will have to prove that Fox acted with actual malice, or reckless disregard of the truth. That standard, established in the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case of 1964, makes it very difficult for prominent plaintiffs to win defamation suits.
What Made 2020 Different
Studies have shown that voters whose candidate loses tend to temporarily lose faith that votes were counted correctly, but if the democracy is healthy losers ultimately consent.
2020 was different.
Leaf Van Boven
Voters personally identified more closely with their political parties than in past elections, said first author Dani Grant, a doctoral student in social psychology.
There is a lot more cognitive dissonance if you are not just dealing with disagreement about abstract policies, but you feel like your actual identity is under threat, said Grant.
Trump did not promptly concede, as George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, John McCain and Hillary Clinton did. And the media landscape had changed.
The takeaway for people of all political stripes: When you start to question election legitimacy, ask yourself why. There may be subtle psychological reasons driving your thinking.
And seek a variety of news sources.
We now exist in a media landscape that is sharply polarized, and we need to take some initiative to seek more diversity. Otherwise, we may just be reaffirming our preexisting beliefs and notions to make us feel better.
Graduate student Alexandra Flores, Assistant Professor Eric Pedersen and David Sherman, a professor at University of Californnia, Santa Barbara co-authored this study.
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Find Out How Much More Pitso Is Getting Paid In Egypt Compared To His Salary At Sundowns
Pitso Mosimane created history when he took the helm of eight-time continental champions Al Ahly as the first black African or non-Egyptian coach.After serving as head coach of Mamelodi Sundowns for seven years, Pitso abruptly announced his resignation, shocking many soccer fans in the nation.At the Borg El Arab Stadium in Alexandria, he recently captained his team as they overcame Talaea El Geish 3-2 on penalties following a 1-1 deadlock in extra time to improve their record and win their 37th Egypt Cup trophy, ten more than their archrivals Zamalek.
All The Key Moments From Election Day
But Fox News said just after midnight Eastern time that stood by the projection.
Arnon Mishkin, director of the Fox News Decision Desk, said the network was confident in its statistical model projecting Biden the winner. Were four standard deviations from being wrong, Mishkin said. And, Im sorry, were not wrong in this particular case.
Mishkin acknowledged that there are outstanding votes in Arizona but said that most are from areas where Biden is performing well.
He said that Fox believed that the universe of remaining votes was far smaller than the more than 1 million that Trumps team claims and that, in any event, they project that Trump will only win about 44 percent of them.
Foxs tally had Biden at 53 percent and Trump at 46 percent.
Im sorry, the president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that seven point lead that Biden has, Mishkin said.
Trump won Arizona in 2016 by a margin of 3.5 percent.
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Democrats Troll Trump By Greeting Him With A Mobile Billboard Showing Clips Of Fox News Announcing His Election Loss Report Says
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The DNC trolled Trump with a billboard campaign outside a Turning Point USA conference on Saturday.
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The mobile billboard circled Tampa and stopped outside the conference center ahead of Trump’s speech.
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It featured videos of Fox News announcing Trump’s 2020 election loss.
The Democratic National Committee trolled former President Donald Trump on Saturday by greeting him outside a conference center ahead of a speech, with a provocative mobile billboard campaign.
Videos flashed on a large screen attached to a truck across the street from the Tampa Conference Center ahead of Trump’s speech at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, DailyMail.com reported.
The mobile billboard also circled the city of Tampa, according to a press release by the DNC, to remind people of the 2020 election results.
The videos showed graphics highlighting Trump’s election loss in November 2020 and the number of votes won by President Joe Biden.
The billboard campaign also featured video clips of Fox News announcing Biden’s win.
Trump is said to have been furious with how Fox News covered Biden’s victory on Election Night 2020. According to “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency” by Michael Wolff, he was enraged when the news station announced Arizona for Biden.
He reportedly shouted, “what the fuck?” and accused the Murdochs of “always” being out to get him, per the book.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Fox News And Cognitive Dissonance
The new research relies on a psychological explanation, known as cognitive dissonance theory, to explain the bizarre turn American politics has taken in the past year.
Cognitive dissonance is when ones personal attitudes and identities are inconsistent with their beliefs. To ease that discomfort, people rationalize the facts to restore consistency and turn to social networks to reaffirm that rationalization. After the 2020 election, the explanation for many was that the election must have been rigged, and the reaffirming social network was Fox News, Van Boven said:
If you expect your candidate to win and then your candidate loses, you are shoved into a state of cognitive dissonance. What you thought was supposed to happen doesnt happen and that feels uncomfortable, so you make sense of it by rationalizing the outcome.
For the study, the researchers took advantage of an unusual natural experiment, a hotly contested election with an unprecedented number of mail-in and absentee ballots, which meant the outcome would not be known for days.
They surveyed a diverse sample of 1,200 people and asked them how much faith they had that the votes were counted correctly. Half responded between Nov. 4 and 8, just after Election Day when many states vote counts had not been confirmed. Half took it between Nov. 9 and 15, after all states had confirmed counts, most media outlets had declared Biden the winner and Biden had delivered his acceptance speech.
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Fox News Correctly Calling Arizona For Biden Set Everything In Motion
This went on for a while, like usual. And then, at 9:20 p.m. Arizona time, something unexpected happened. Fox News, alone among TV networks, called Arizona for Biden. No other networks followed suit until that Saturday, though the Associated Press also projected Biden as the winner in Arizona.
It was fantastic TV. Anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were somewhat perplexed. They dragged out Mishkin to explain things. Which he did. Are you sure about the call, because a lot of people are upset, was the gist of the questioning.
Absolutely, Mishkin said.
He was right.
Trump, of course, was livid. Thats not news.
But he remained livid also not a groundbreaking development as did his supporters. That call, by a Trump friendly network, was the linchpin in everything that followed.
Just think about everything that followed.
Think about Jan. 6, when Trump incited protesters to storm the U.S. Capitol, one of the darkest stains on the history of the country. Yet somehow it has its apologists, including Tucker Carlson. It is a disgrace and should be covered as such.
Think about Trump just skipping Bidens inauguration.
Stirewalt repeatedly had defended the network’s decision. Sammon had editorial oversight of the Decision Desk, according to the New York Times.
Think about the audit in Arizona, in which the state Senate hired an unqualified company with no previous experience in this kind of thing in a blatant attempt to sow doubt in the integrity of elections.
He Hasnt Shown Any Interest In Doing The Work:
Biden is better liked than Clinton and polls suggest there are now fewer undecided voters, who broke for Trump in the races final weeks four years ago. And Clinton was hobbled in the final weeks by a series of setbacks including the late reopening of an FBI investigation into her emails. The impact of any additional October surprise this time would be limited by the record number of voters who have already cast their ballots.
Trumps team, for its part, has been working to repair his standing with suburban women and older voters soured by his handling of the pandemic, while trying to boost enthusiasm among targeted groups like Catholic and Second Amendment voters as well as aiming to build support among Black and Latino voters.
Hes again at the thread-the-needle stage, said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. He noted that because Trump won key states by so few votes last time around, he has very little margin for error.
Still, Miringoff stressed that while many polls may favor Biden, they do not account for cataclysmic events, such as potential voter suppression, election interference, or court challenges that could halt votes from being counted. Democrats are expected to cast far more ballots by mail, which are rejected at higher rates than in-person ballots, even in normal years.
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Journalists And Politicians Still Claiming That Trump Won The Election Are Lying
But theres an important thing to remember here, something that overrides any memories or predictions. Its this:
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
If you believe Trump won, you are mistaken, misled or willfully ignorant of the facts.
If you are a media person or a public figure who continues to propagate this lie Kari Lake and Mike Lindell spring immediately to mind but there are so many others you are a liar.
It was an unusual election night to begin with. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the shape of our lives, and this was no different. Vaccines werent yet available. Many newsrooms covered election night virtually, like they had much of the campaign.
But things started out pretty regular. Some returns came in from the East Coast, because of the time-zone difference.
Will Trump Tv Dethrone Fox News As The Voice Of Right
Up next…Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump?
Could Trump be planning a move into television following his loss to Joe Biden? It’s something he’s shown an interest in before.
A former TV host on The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, Trump has long railed against the mainstream media, and the term “fake news” will forever be associated with his tenure in the White House, as of course will his volatile relationship with the press.
Now that he has lost the 2020 presidential election, could “alternative facts” be coming to a station near you?
Trump made his anger at Fox’s election coverage known last week when the network was the first to report that Arizona flipped blue.
Signaling the end of the love affair between Fox and Trump and his supporters, the network was subject to attacks and chants of “Fox News sucks” at polling stations were reported.
As the chances of a second term began slipping away from him, Trump even put in a personal call to Rupert Murdoch, who stood by the decision to call Arizona.
But Trump’s dissatisfaction with Fox goes back further than the network’s 2020 election coverage.
Sarah Ellison, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of War at the Wall Street Journal guessed back in 2016 when it looked like Hillary Clinton was set for victory, that Trump was planning to cash in on a right-wing media empire.
“We ought to start our own network and put some real news out there,” Trump said .
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