Nearly a year after the fact, former President Donald Trump is still bent out of shape over Fox News correctly projecting on election night that President Joe Biden won Arizona’s vote.
In an interview that aired on Monday, the twice-impeached ex-president fumed to Newsmax anchor John Bachman about Fox’s decision to retain Arnon Mishkin as the head of the network’s vaunted “Decision Desk.”
Bachman, who spoke to the president ahead of his Saturday night rally in Iowa, brought up Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott confirming last week that Mishkin would return for both the 2022 and 2024 elections. (While Mishkin is set to return, Fox “purged” politics editor Chris Stirewalt—one of the public faces of the desk—earlier this year in what Fox described as a restructure.)
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“I’m sure you probably heard that Fox just hired this Mishkin guy back from the Decision Desk. The guy who botched the call during the election,” the Newsmax host gleefully declared. (Fox’s call for Arizona and the rest of the 2020 presidential election was accurate, contrary to Bachman’s description, and several audits and recounts of Arizona’s ballots have confirmed Biden’s victory.)
“He also backed Obama and Hillary, I’m told. Why do you think they hired him back?” Bachman asked the former president.
“I think it’s terrible that they hired him back,” Trump groused. “He made a terrible call, it was a terrible thing to do.”
The ex-president, as he is wont to do, went on to baselessly allege that he “won Arizona by a lot,” especially when you “look at those numbers” from a recent “report” by a pro-Trump group hired by Arizona Republicans. The review in question, which actually found more votes cast for Biden in the state, has been summarily dismissed by election experts.
“We won other states by a lot—it was a rigged election,” Trump cried. “I think it was a disgrace that they hired him back!”
Since Trump’s election loss, Newsmax has openly embraced election denialism in an effort to peel off disgruntled MAGA viewers who were angry with Fox’s projections. The ratings bump the network enjoyed by aggressively dumping on Fox, however, was short-lived, and the network has since found itself the recipient of a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit for peddling election lies.
