Melania Trump: ‘I couldn’t believe it’ when Arizona was called for Biden

• Melania Trump, in her new book, questioned Arizona’s early call for Biden on election night 2020.
• “How could they name him so early before all the votes were counted?” she wrote.
• The call marked a huge turning point because it showed Biden making inroads in a key swing state.

Former First Lady Melania Trump, in her new memoir, echoed her husband, former President Donald Trump, in continuing to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In “Melania,” the former first lady recounted her experience in the White House during her four years in Washington, D.C., which included the November 2020 election night — when her husband saw early wins in countless GOP-friendly states before one of the most important. for Joe Biden, a significant political battleground was required.

When the incumbent was projected as the winner of Arizona — a onetime Republican stronghold that before 2020 had last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1996 — many Republicans balked at the call.

And the then-first lady was among those surprised by the projection, which was an early sign of Biden’s success in winning over swing state independents and an indicator of his likelihood of taking the presidency.

“At 11:30 p.m., Fox News projected that Arizona would go back to Biden. I couldn’t believe it,” she wrote in the book. “How could they call it so early before all the votes were counted? It was another sign that it wasn’t a normal election.”

The call from Fox’s decision office came before other major outlets had declared Biden the winner in Arizona, as he was ahead of Trump by only a narrow margin. But the decision office felt confident in their call given the outstanding votes that remained.

Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes out of nearly 3.4 million ballots cast, bolstered by his strength in populous Maricopa County and support from the state’s growing Latino population.

Presidential contests in safe Democratic and safe Republican states are generally close for either party based on early returns and other key factors. And such calls tend to be made before vote counting is complete in those states.

But as a pivot state, Arizona’s appeal was huge. And at the time, the overall outcome of the election remained in doubt, which also raised concerns for the then first lady.

“The media reported that because of how different states counted mail-in ballots and different mail-in deadlines, the results won’t be clear for several days,” she wrote. “At this point, everything was called into question for me.”

The Associated Press projected that Biden would win Arizona within hours of Fox News calling. But among news outlets, there was some reluctance to call Arizona for Biden early, given the state’s tight margin.

Nate Cohn, chief political analyst at The New York Times, argued in March 2023 that while Fox’s decision office was right about Biden winning Arizona, the network “also came very close to being wrong “.

“Here at the Times, we rejected the AP call for Arizona (The Times usually accepts AP calls, but we independently evaluate AP projections in very important races) because we could not rule out a Trump victory based on the available data,” said he. said.

“While it worked out for Fox in the end, equally risky decisions could have easily resulted in a missed call, with potentially serious consequences for confidence in American elections,” he added.