News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch on election night last year decided that Fox News should call Arizona for President Biden, according to a new book by Michael Wolff.
In the book “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” Rupert Murdoch told his son Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox Corp., to project Biden as the winner of Arizona, Insider reported.
“Lachlan got his father on the phone to ask if he wanted to make the early call. His father, with signature grunt, assented, adding, ‘F— him,’ ” Wolff wrote in the forthcoming book, a copy of which was obtained by Insider.
A Fox News Media spokesperson on Friday called Wolff’s account of events “completely false.”
“Arnon Mishkin who leads the FOX News Decision Desk made the Arizona call on election night and FOX News Media President Jay Wallace was then called in the control room. Any other version of the story is wildly inaccurate,” the spokesperson said.
Fox was the first major network to call Arizona for Biden.
The book said the decision to call Arizona for Biden angered the Trump campaign, which was feeling confident they would emerge victorious on election night.
Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer called Jason Miller, Trump’s spokesperson at the time, to give him the news, according to the book.
“Miller involuntarily rose from his seat. ‘What the f—?’ he said out loud, looking around and seeing the still-merry and untroubled faces in the Map Room,” Wolff wrote.
A Fox News spokesperson on Friday disputed that passage in Wolff’s book and pointed to a previous denial by the outlet saying, “This never happened and is completely untrue.”
“What the f—? How can they call this?” Trump said after hearing the decision, according to the book. “We’re winning. And everybody can see we are going to win. Everybody’s calling to say that we’re winning. And then they pull this?”
Fox News media correspondent Howard Kurtz said in November that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner called Rupert Murdoch after the decision to “complain.”
Biden won Arizona by about 10,000 votes. Trump and many of his allies have claimed without evidence that the election was rigged and that there was widespread voter fraud.
Updated at 3:03 p.m.