(PresidentialHill.com)- In response to criticism from the Trump campaign, a new book claims that Fox News host Bret Baier wanted the network to reverse its early call of Arizona for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Authors Peter Baker and Susan Glasser claim that Baier asked the network to withdraw its electoral call and referenced an email he sent to a network executive in “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.”
According to reports, the book claims that “the Trump campaign was pretty upset,” as he stated in an email to Jay Wallace, Fox’s president and executive editor.
Baier said -“It’s becoming uncomfortable here. Extreme discomfort. I have to defend this on air repeatedly.”
Early in the evening, Fox’s Decision Desk predicted that Biden would win the state; this infuriated the Trump team, who insisted that the former president would win the state after all of the mail-in ballots were counted.
According to the book, Baier charged the Decision Desk workers with “holding on for pride.” According to reports, Baier insisted, “It’s hurting us.” The sooner we take it out of his column, even if it makes us seem bad, the better, in my opinion.
The authors wrote of that interaction that the top news presenter for Fox was pushing not just to declare Arizona was too close to call but to pretend that the president had won it. Baier said that the book misrepresented his comment.
According to the book, Wallace ultimately prohibited the channel from declaring Nevada for Biden because he “did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.”
In reaction to the article, the cable TV news network released two responses, one of which was provided by Baier.
According to a business representative, FOX News was the first to call a historic election night outcome. In the days that followed, they stood by the prediction, which was validated, and other news outlets eventually agreed with them.
According to Baier, the book does not report the whole context of the e-mail. “The phrase, ‘the Trump campaign was pretty upset,’ was taken from an external email that I cited in my note, not something I ever stated.”
He said that the email was issued the day after the election. He informed Fox staff of the changes and what locals were saying and projected district by district in the days immediately following the election when vote margins in Arizona drastically shrunk.
Baier wanted to determine the vote margin at which they would have to withdraw the Biden call. He added that he would defend the judgment made by the decision desk on the air and that he fully backed it.
