Mark Meadows describes freak out at the White House after Fox News called Arizona for Biden
According to excerpts from former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadow's upcoming book, the decision by Fox News to call Arizona for now-President Joe Biden on election night set off an explosion of shouting and cursing as Meadows attempted to call the conservative network for a correction.
Business Insider reports that Meadow's book, 'The Chief's Chief" reveals turmoil at the White House that night over Arizona in particular for handing the normally Republican stronghold to Biden with Meadows admitting he almost broke his phone.
In his book, the former GOP lawmaker -- who is now being scrutinized by the House committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection -- wrote, "I walked back down to the Map Room, where our analysts were reporting good news from social media. The Twitter traffic was all trending in the right direction," before the bad news came in.
"Then, out of nowhere, I heard a loud series of screams and expletives from the next room. Fox News had called Arizona for Joe Biden," he continued while admitting he felt the call came too early.
"Not only was this infuriating, but it was also mathematically impossible to determine at this early hour. With the information that Fox News had at the time, they could not possibly have been able to legitimately make the call that they did," Meadows recalled before explaining he then tried to call Bill Sammon who, at the time, served as the managing editor of Fox News Washington.
According to Meadows, he believed "liberals" at Fox were behind the early call decision.
"My worst fears — that there was a liberal contingent within the network trying to sabotage President Trump in the name of objectivity — had been realized. I dialed Bill Sammon once again, tapping the numbers with such force that I'm surprised I didn't crack the screen of my iPhone," he wrote, telling Sammon, "There is no information that you could have at this time that would make this call possible."
Informed that the network's modeling of election results were behind the decision, Meadows reports that he shot back, "It may well be that President Trump loses Arizona. But if he does, it's going to be by fewer than ten thousand votes, and there is no way you could know that right now."
As it turned out, Biden did win Arizona despite Donald Trump still claiming otherwise and an audit initiated by backers of the former president revealing the same.
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