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- Murdoch made the decision to call Arizona for Biden in the 2020 election, Michael Wolff reported.
- "F--- him," the Fox News proprietor reportedly said of Trump when making the call.
- The decision was a pivotal moment on election night, indicating Trump was on course for defeat.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The Fox News proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, personally gave final approval to the network's decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election, according to a Daily Beast report of Michael Wolff's upcoming book.
The decision to call Arizona for Biden was a pivotal moment on election night, indicating that the Democrat was poised to win the traditionally Republican-leaning state and on course for victory.
Fox News was the first major network to make the call, a move that reportedly shocked and angered former President Donald Trump, who had counted on steadfastly supportive coverage of his administration from Fox News during his term in office.
According to multiple reports, the Trump campaign lobbied the network to reverse the call. The New York Times reported in November that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, contacted Murdoch directly asking for a retraction.
The Fox News elections desk and its editor received praise in some quarters after resisting pressure to reverse the call, seemingly in defiance of the highly partisan slant of most of the network's coverage.
Chris Stirewalt, the network's political editor at the time, described becoming the focus for "murderous rage" from Trump supporters for his involvement in the Arizona call. He was fired this January.
But according to Wolff, who wrote a best-selling biography of the Murdoch family before turning his attentions to Trump, it was actually Murdoch and his son Lachlan - the CEO of Fox Corporation - who made teh final call.
Wolff wrote, according to the daily Beast, that the elections desk "was merely cover ... to bypass the news desk and be directly answerable to the Murdochs. Certainly, there was every reason, if you wanted a reason to delay the Arizona call, to yet forestall it and still have no fear of being preempted by anyone else. Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with signature grunt, assented, adding: 'Fuck him.'"
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Wolff's claims add another layer of drama to the story of the relationship between Trump and the Murdochs.
Rupert Murdoch was initially dismissive of Trump's bid for the presidency in 2015, but as the reality star began sweep aside challengers, Fox News became one of the key media supporters of Trump's agenda.
Murdoch reportedly started to sour on Trump late last year, believing - according to reports - that Trump had botched his response to the coronavirus and was on course to lose the election.
Though the Arizona call suggested that Fox News was distancing itself from Trump, many of the network's hosts have continued to back the whitewashing of the pro-Trump Capitol riot and bogus election-fraud claims pushed by the former president.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/36lCExw
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