‘A Night of Angry Calls’: New Report Details How Trump HQ ‘Erupted’ After Fox News Called Arizona for Biden

Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

A New York Times report detailed the massive shift of Donald Trump and his campaign’s mood after Fox News called Arizona in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden’s late into Tuesday night.

Trump’s decisive victory in Florida kept the campaign upbeat until Fox’s controversial call of Arizona [the Associated Press later called the state in favor of Biden Wednesday morning]. The moment of the decision in the camp was described by the Times’ Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni:

What ensued for Mr. Trump was a night of angry calls to Republican governors and advice from campaign aides that he ignored, leading to a middle-of-the-night presidential briefing in which he made a reckless and unsubstantiated string of remarks about the democratic process. Standing in the East Room at 2:30 a.m., he dismissed the election as a “fraud” and claimed he wanted to stop the counting of votes and leave the results to the Supreme Court.

The Trump campaign knew Arizona could be up for grabs, but the Fox News call putting it in Mr. Biden’s column was symbolic, making it the first state that appeared to have flipped from the president’s 2016 batch of winning states. Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican of Arizona, had been on the phone all night with administration officials and campaign staff members, adamant that there were still Republican votes to be counted in his state.

Trump also reportedly spent less time campaigning this cycle in Arizona “because he did not like traveling west and spending the night on the road.”

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner reportedly called Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch after the decision and phoned people looking for a “James Baker-like” figure to lead legal efforts, per the Times. Regarding the legal efforts and lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed, several White House officials and advisers were reportedly hopeful it could “change the trajectory of the race.”

In the beginning of Wednesday morning, advisers tried to get Trump to address supporters and the American people in the East room of the White House. But Biden beat them to the punch. Instead, Trump spoke at 2:30 a.m. ET and falsely claimed that “we did win this election.”

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