Four years ago, Fox News precipitated an internal crisis with a bold election night call that President Joe Biden would beat Donald Trump in the crucial state of Arizona. This year illustrated the difference that four years can make.
Fox News wasn’t the first network early on Wednesday to declare Trump had sealed his victory over Kamala Harris — upstart NewsNation, conservative rival Newsmax and Scripps Networks led the way — but its ultimate call came nearly four hours before ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and The Associated Press made theirs.
Judging by the cheers that erupted when Fox’s call was shown to the Trump faithful gathered at his West Palm Beach victory party, it was a decision that surely was received much better by its viewers than the 2020 call was.
“When you don’t like how the cake tastes, you’re not going to like the recipe,” said Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at NewsNation. “When you like the cake, you’ll love the recipe.”
Trump, Fox can both claim comebacks on election night
Fox’s Bret Baier called Trump’s victory “the biggest political phoenix from the ashes story that we have ever seen,” and Fox can claim a comeback of its own.
Fox’s Arizona call in 2020 infuriated Trump and many of the network’s viewers. While it ultimately proved correct, it set in motion furious internal second-guessing and led some Fox personalities to embrace conspiracy theories, which ultimately cost the network a staggering $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.
NewsNation, which used information from the elections forecasting company Decision Desk HQ, made its call at 1:22 a.m. on Wednesday. Scripps and Newsmax, which also use DDHQ, were within a minute of making the same declaration.
At about that time, Baier said that “we’re not there yet,” but noted there was no path to victory for Harris. Fox made its call at 1:47 a.m.
The AP called the election for Trump at 5:34 a.m. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the AP all made their calls within a few moments of each other. The AP explained that its declaration that Trump had won came after awarding Wisconsin to the former president by determining that remaining uncounted votes from around the Milwaukee area would not be enough for Harris to overcome Trump’s lead there.
For NewsNation’s Stirewalt, his network’s early call on Wednesday provided a rich irony. He was politics editor at Fox News in 2020 and he and a fellow executive, Bill Sammon, were essentially fired following the outcry over the Arizona call — even though they were proven right.