Rupert Murdoch Approved Fox News Early Call Of Arizona For Biden On Election Night

Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp founder, gave his son Lachlan Murdoch approval for Fox News to call Arizona for Joe Biden on the election night last year, according to a new book by Michael Wolff.

According to Wolff’s book Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, Rupert Murdoch told Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp., to announce the projection.  

In the book, Wolff said that these two Murdochs had “every reason” to hold back the projection of Arizona, considering the vast number of conservatives in its audience, and Fox’s strong allegiance to the then-President Donald Trump.  

Fox News was the first network to project Biden’s win in Arizona.

“Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with a signature grunt, assented, adding, ‘F— him,'” Wolff wrote on his new book.

Wolff noted that following the network’s decision to release its projection on Arizona for Biden, Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer contacted the Trump campaign’s Jason Miller to tell him the decision in advance.

“Miller involuntarily rose from his seat. ‘What the f—?’ he said out loud, looking around and seeing the still-merry and untroubled faces in the Map Room,” Wolff accounted in his new book.

Following the report, Fox News released a statement denying Wolff’s account of the conversations.

“This account is completely false,” Fox News said in a statement. “Arnon Mishkin who leads the Fox News Decision Desk made the Arizona call on election night and Fox News Media President Jay Wallace was then called in the control room. Any other version of the story is wildly inaccurate.”

Though Fox News may have distanced itself from the former president, many Fox News hosts, like Sean Hannity, still show their support toward him despite his misleading voter fraud claims that eventually led to the Capitol riot on January 6.

Article by Dongyoon Shin