Fox News host Chris Wallace said that the network’s controversial early call on the presidential election in Arizona was unwavering despite social media outrage and anger from the Trump campaign.
Wallace made the comments on Thursday to Dana Perino on her Fox News show as ballots were still being counted in some states.
“At this point, the president is still trailing,” said Wallace.
“Fox News has already called Arizona, it’s caused a lot of heartburn in the Republican party, but I did check in with our decision desk earlier today and they’re not wavering. They say that our call on Arizona is right, which puts him at 264 [electoral votes].
“And if Biden wins at this point, with 264, any of the three states I’ve talked about, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, he goes over the top.”
Fox News appeared to call Arizona, a key swing state in the election, early on election night for Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger, despite numerous other news outlets declining to make a call.
Wallace went on to address accusations of voter fraud by the president and many of his supporters.
“Is there any hard evidence of fraud? There doesn’t seem to be so far,” said Wallace.
“There seem to be some allegations, but not hard evidence,” he added. “And there is nothing that rises to the level that it could be enough fraud to switch votes when you’re talking about thousands and thousands of vote difference between the two candidates.”
Earlier Thursday Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, accused the director of the Fox News decision desk of being biased against Republicans and demanded that the channel rescind their call.
Notably, many independent and Dem-leaning pollsters, including FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, have also criticized Fox’s decision to call Arizona and have maintained that the race remains too close to call.
Wallace also said that the polling industry was “broken” by the margin between their predictions for the election and the actual results. Wallace said Democrats expected a “blue wave” but instead got a “blue ripple.”
Here’s the video of the comments from Wallace:
Chris Wallace addresses the elephant in the room, says that if Nevada gets called for Biden soon then Fox News will… https://t.co/yoHHVj1RrA
— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1604605604.0