A Fox News editor who was fired after playing a leading role in calling President Joe Biden's November election victory in Arizona before any other news network has said that he did not feel vindicated by last week's election audit results because the damage has already been done.
Digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt was fired in January after calling the typically red state for Biden earlier than other networks, which reportedly angered former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Trump's son-in-law and former adviser even reportedly got in touch with Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire owner of Fox News, to try and get the channel to take back its call, which came as a surprise given the network's generally conservative stance. The Associated Press, which collaborated with Fox when surveying the election results, was the second organization to call Arizona for Biden, the Los Angeles Times reported.
An audit of the election results requested by Trump released last week further affirmed Biden's victory, and said that Trump received 261 fewer votes than the official results in Maricopa Country, the state's most populous county.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Stirewalt said he did not feel vindicated by audit's results because "they're doing their damage anyway."
"The point of these [audits] is to undermine confidence. It's not what the finding is," Stirewalt said. "So I take no satisfaction or pleasure from seeing this outcome that roughly corresponds with the real results. They're doing their damage anyway."
CNN's Jim Acosta then asked if Stirewalt wanted to sue for wrongful termination or "get on the phone with somebody over at Fox and say, 'told you so?'"
But the former Fox editor brushed off the question, saying: "Everybody knows that we were right in our call, that's never been in doubt."
"And if I did that, I couldn't be here with you today hanging out, so we would be deprived of this time together," he joked. "So why would I do that?"
Trump has repeatedly denied that he lost the election, despite each recount reaffirming Biden's victory. Trump falsely told a rally in Georgia over the weekend that the Arizona audit revealed that he actually ended up winning the state.
In the CNN interview, Stirewalt said he had "sincere sympathy" for those who were duped by Trump.
"There are people who really believe this stuff. I don't know what Donald Trump actually believes I think he knows he lost but whatever. I have really sympathy for... there are thousands of people out in the United States who sincerely believe this stuff and that's a crisis that we have to address in a lot of different ways," he said.
Stirewalt said he had "disdain" for people who continued to promulgate the misinformation, citing Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other state GOP officials for defending upcoming audits, demanded by Trump, in four counties in the state that the latter won in the 2020 election.
The former Fox editor said that that "it doesn't matter what you find, he [Trump] will claim fraud anyway."
Newsweek has contacted Chris Stirewalt and Fox News for comment.
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Jack Dutton is a Newsweek Reporter based in Cape Town, South Africa. His focus is reporting on global politics and ... Read more
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