Trump campaign demands media stop reporting when Biden wins states

On a press call Thursday morning, the Trump campaign’s senior adviser Jason Miller said that it was irresponsible for the Associated Press and Fox News to call the state of Arizona for Democratic nominee Joe Biden while ballots remain to be counted.

“It’s critical to point out that folks are coming around to the point that we’ve been saying over and over since election night … that President Trump is on pace to win Arizona,” Miller said to reporters.

He noted that election forecaster and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver “came out and said that Fox News and the AP should rescind their calling of the state.”

He appeared to be referencing recent remarks of Silver on FiveThirtyEight’s liveblog.

“I don’t know, I guess I’d say that Biden will win Arizona if you forced me to pick,” Silver wrote, “but I sure as heck don’t think the state should have been called by anyone, and I think the calls that were previously made should be retracted now.”

Silver also said that the AP and Fox News likely “put more work into looking into this than I have.”

“But you never know, and you will get incorrect calls occasionally,” he added.

Silver also observed that while he didn’t think the state should have been called yet, he thought it was “likely” that Biden won it.

Miller did not mention Thursday that Silver said the AP’s call for Biden was likely correct.

“It is notable that all of the other broadcast networks besides Fox have held off on calling the state of Arizona,” Miller said.

He added that “people from the media” are saying the AP should “renounce and rescind calling of the state of Arizona,” but did not name any specific examples other than Silver.

“We think it’s completely irresponsible for anyone to call this state for Biden, especially as these ballots are coming in,” Miller said.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien also claimed on the call that “the race in Arizona gets closer and closer every day.”

But Biden currently leads 50.5% to 48.1% in Arizona, with 86% of votes reported. Donald Trump would need to compensate for Biden’s current lead in the state of nearly 69,000 votes.

Yet despite their professed contempt for calling a state while poll workers are still counting ballots, the Trump campaign had no qualms about claiming victory in the state of Pennsylvania on the call.

“We are very confident that we will be winning Pennsylvania,” Miller said. “That’s why we announced that we have won the state of Pennsylvania. We are confident of that.”

No news outlet, however, has yet called Pennsylvania.

On the call, Bill Stepien also claimed that Trump was ahead “by 200,000 votes” in Pennsylvania, but this number has dwindled to about 118,000 with hundreds of thousands of votes remaining to be counted in key counties.

And 77% of Pennsylvania’s mail-in votes up till now have been for Biden.

Stepien blamed Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Secretary of State, for election confusion in the state, claiming that Democrats “lying, cheating and stealing is running rampant all over this country.”

He claimed the campaign has received “countless incoming calls” of election “fraud and abuse” in the state of Pennsylvania.

Every night, added Stepien, “the president goes to bed with a lead, a sizable lead” in various states and “every night, new votes are mysteriously found in a sack.”

“It is a disgrace,” Stepien said. “The American people deserve better. Our democracy deserves better.”

He said that Boockvar is incapable of running an unbiased election, calling her a “partisan hack” and a “disgrace.”

“This is why Americans have lost faith in our democracy,” Stepien said.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.