'Not even close': Rupert Murdoch told Kushner that Biden’s Arizona victory was 'ironclad' on election night

28 July 2022

Although Fox News is facing a major defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for promoting the false and totally debunked claim that Dominion’s equipment was used to help steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, some members of Fox News’ hard news division did some accurate reporting on Election Night. Fox News’ decision desk, in fact, accurately called Arizona for now-President Joe Biden on Election Night 2020, and according to former White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner’s new book, “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” Rupert Murdoch had no doubt that Biden was the legitimate winner in Arizona.

After Fox News called Arizona for Biden, Murdoch, according to the book, told Kushner, “The numbers are ironclad. It’s not even close.” Subsequent vote recounts in Arizona demonstrated that Murdoch, in that case, was absolutely right: Biden, not Trump, was the clear winner in Arizona.

Biden’s victory in Arizona, like his victory in Georgia, was among the bombshells of 2020’s presidential election. For many years, Arizona was a deep red state and was synonymous with the conservative politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, Sen. John McCain. But in recent years, Arizona has evolved into a swing state. Both of Arizona’s two U.S. senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, are centrist Democrats, although its term-limited governor, Doug Ducey, is a right-wing Republican.

“Breaking History” has an August 23 release date on Amazon, and previews of Kushner’s book have come from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly. In an article published by the Times on July 25, Haberman reported that according to the book, Kushner was secretly treated for thyroid cancer in 2019.

Pengelly’s reporting, in an article published by The Guardian on July 28, focuses heavily on what Kushner’s book has to say about Arizona. In “Breaking History,” Kushner says of Biden’s Arizona victory, “The shocking projection brought our momentum to a screeching halt. It instantly changed the mood among our campaign’s leaders, who were scrambling to understand the network’s methodology…. I dialed Rupert Murdoch and asked why Fox News had made the Arizona call before hundreds of thousands of votes were tallied. Rupert said he would look into the issue, and minutes later, he called back.”

During that conversation, Murdoch told Kushner, “Sorry Jared, there is nothing I can do. The Fox News data authority says the numbers are ironclad. He says it won’t be close.’”

Trump was furious when Fox News called Arizona for Biden, and he continues to make the false claim that Arizona was stolen from him through voter fraud — a false claim that former television news anchor and far-right conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, the frontrunner in Arizona’s 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary, has been campaigning on.

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