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Arnon Mishkin leads the decision table at the Trump-affiliated Fox News television station during the US election. All election results go through his desk and he decides when a state is considered safe for one of the two presidential candidates. Mishkin also decided that the important American state of Arizona would be awarded to Joe Biden early Wednesday, although several 100,000 votes still remained to be counted.
Fox News was one of the first major American media outlets to classify Arizona as safe. The renowned Associated Press (AP) news agency, which cites the same data, did not do the same until later on Wednesday. Other media outlets, such as CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had not made a decision as of Friday afternoon to award Arizona to any of the candidates. Biden leads by nearly 50,000 votes.
Trump’s campaign team knows the importance of Arizona and its eleven voters to the election outcome, and complained Wednesday directly after Fox News declared Biden the winner there. But it didn’t stop there: Trump’s team openly attacked data analyst Mishkin personally.
The fact that Fox News is close to the president of the United States is likely to influence the intensity of the uproar in the Trump camp. The AP did not attack the team publicly, and yet the news agency came out publicly. “The Associated Press continues to monitor and analyze Arizona’s vote counts as they arrive,” editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee said Thursday. “We will follow the facts in all cases.”
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On Fox News, however, Trump’s team raised the alarm. First, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner contacted Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to reverse the decision. According to the Washington Post, the US president himself did not contact him. “Even then, he would not have intervened or changed our decision,” Murdoch wrote in an email to the Washington Post.
Mishkin said that more than 80 percent of the votes had already been received when his team got engaged. “We feel like we made the right decision at the right time, which is why we did it.”
After he confirmed his decision, he no longer addressed Mishkin indirectly, but directly. In a statement, the team called him a “Democrat who votes for Clinton and finances Biden” who “insists on his terrible decision and refuses to reverse his unfounded decision.”
Early Thursday morning, Trump’s campaign team posted a list on Twitter to show that Mishkin financially supported Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s 2008 campaign. It is also said that he elected Hillary Clinton four years ago, which he even made public. That led her to declare again: “Arnon Mishkin and the AP should immediately reverse their decision to join Joe Biden in Arizona.”
According to the list the team published, Mishkin paid $ 1,500 to the Obama and Biden election campaign. 2008 was the year he began running the Fox News Decision Board, which he has served on since 1998. However, the full truth also includes: Mishkin paid even more campaign aid to Republican politicians; official data prove it.
But why would a data journalist support political parties? Mishkin, 65, is not a full-time Fox News employee. Before assuming control of the decision table, he was also a policy advisor to Democratic and Republican politicians. That reports the “Los Angeles Times.”
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Other than that, Mishkin’s decision to make Arizona a Biden state was not Mishkin’s only decision – the decision was based on mathematical calculations performed by the data team. He did not believe on Thursday that Trump could still catch up, although the gap was getting smaller and smaller.
There are still open voices in Maricopa County, but: “We firmly believe that our decision will stand. And that’s why we won’t change them. “
As soon as AP reports it, the winner is sure
In the United States there is no federal electoral line; instead, pollsters conduct post-election polls. Generally, the presidential election is also decided on the basis of the forecasts of the big media companies.
Another point that historically proves Fox News is right: The AP news agency is valued for its independence and accuracy. As soon as AP announces the winner, the choice is really decided.
It is unclear if the incidents outside a government building in Arizona are related to public verbal attacks by Trump’s team. A large group of supporters of the president had gathered in front of the building in the Maricopa Conty district, several of them carrying weapons such as automatic rifles, a correspondent for the news channel CNN reported in a live broadcast.
Trump reiterated late Friday that, from his point of view, with the votes cast “legally”, he had won the election with ease. The president had previously claimed at a White House appearance that Democrats were trying to fraudulently steal his victory. Twitter immediately warned the tweet that the post could contain misleading information. (with dpa)
