Melania Trump says she ‘couldn’t believe it’ when Arizona was called ‘so early’ for Biden in 2020
Former first lady Melania Trump in her new memoir raised concerns about the 2020 election.
Former first lady Melania Trump in her new memoir echoed her husband, former President Donald Trump, by 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, DC, which included election night in November 2020 — when her husband saw early victories in myriad GOP-friendly states before one of the most consequential political battlegrounds was called for Joe Biden.
When the now-president was projected as the winner of Arizona — a onetime Republican bastion that before 2020 had last voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 1996 — many Republicans were up in arms about the call.
And the then-first lady was among those who were taken aback by the projection, which was an early sign of Biden’s success at winning over swing-state independents and an indicator of his likelihood of capturing the presidency.
“At 11:30 pm, Fox News projected that Arizona would flip 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 this was not a normal election.”
The call by Fox’s decision desk came before other major outlets had declared Biden as the winner in Arizona, as he was ahead of Trump by only a narrow margin. But the decision desk felt confident in their call given the outstanding votes that remained.
Biden went on to win Arizona by 10,457 votes out of nearly 3.4 million ballots cast, with the victory powered by his strength in populous Maricopa County and support from the state’s burgeoning Latino population.
Presidential contests in safely Democratic and safely Republican states are generally called for either party based on early returns and other key factors. And such calls tend to be made before the vote counting is completed in those states.
But as a pivotal swing state, the Arizona call was huge. And at the time, the overall election result remained in question, which also raised concerns for the then-first lady.
“The media reported that due to the way different states counted mail-in ballots and the various mail-in deadlines, the results would not 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 hours after Fox News had made their call. But among news outlets, there was some hesitation to call Arizona for Biden early on given the close margin in the state.
Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst at The New York Times, argued in March 2023 that while Fox’s decision desk was right about Biden winning Arizona, the network also “came very close to being wrong.”
“Here at The Times, we rejected the A.P. call on Arizona (The Times usually accepts A.P. calls, but we independently evaluate A.P. projections in very important races) because we couldn’t rule out a Trump victory based on the available data,” he said.
“While it worked out for Fox in the end, similarly risky decisions could have easily led to a missed call, with potentially dire consequences for trust in American elections,” he added.
