The turning point was Arizona. When Fox News called the Sun Belt State, which had only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once since 1948, for Joe Biden at 11:20 p.m. on Election Day, it sent a ripple of boos around the East Room of the White House, where guests were watching results on two big screens, before triggering a three-pronged response inside the Trump campaign: anger at the network for an early call, a slew of fundraising emails, and the rollout of a legal strategy to challenge results and keep the president in the White House.
“Why did they call Arizona almost as soon as polls closed when they waited to call Florida, where our polls showed we were up big?” said Kelly Sadler of the Trump-supporting super PAC America First Action. “It was ridiculous.”
Pollsters and media organizations came under attack while a slew of legal challenges was launched in the 48 hours after polls closed. The result is a flood-the-zone approach, typical of the way President Trump has governed, with aides swamping the airwaves to shape public perception and push the idea that a win by Biden would be illegitimate.
Texas Republican operative Brendan Steinhauser said the campaign was throwing everything it could at the counts to see what stuck.
“They were always going to challenge the results. They said as much, and it’s a way for him to feel good about losing — to basically say, ‘I didn’t lose fair and square. They rigged and stole it,’” he said.
“And the idea is to damage Biden from the beginning as an illegitimate president.
The theme that united the three prongs was that Democrats were mounting a bid to steal the election. The groundwork was laid in preelection polls that seeded the idea that Biden was sure to win, said one Trump insider, prompting premature calls in states such as Arizona.
A fundraising email sent in Vice President Mike Pence’s name on election night spelled out the perceived threat.
“The results are rolling in and we’re well on our way to winning big,” he said. “But, it’s only a matter of time before the Democrats try to steal the election and manipulate the results. They’ve made it clear they’d rather destroy our nation than have four more years of our president’s incredible leadership.”
The campaign quickly assembled a team to challenge key counts in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and others. It is led by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and campaign deputy manager Justin Clark, whose law firm is providing legal support, according to a senior adviser familiar with the details.
In Michigan, it lost an attempt to stop the count, and in Georgia, a judge dismissed the case that asked him to ensure a county was adhering to laws on processing absentee ballots. But in Pennsylvania, a judge upheld its demand for access to the count.
In Philadelphia, campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski told reporters: “Democracy dies in darkness. This is the opportunity to shed light on what’s going on inside this building.”
But opponents pointed out that the Trump team had offered few, if any, examples of wrongdoing, and legal experts questioned whether the president had a path to victory through the courts. Instead, they said the challenges were designed to muddy the waters and delay a result for Biden.
“The current legal maneuvering is mainly a way for the Trump campaign to try to extend the ball game in the long-shot hope that some serious anomaly will emerge,” Robert Yablon, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Law School, told the Associated Press.
And while the decisive counts rumble slowly on, the Trump campaign kept up its accusations that the fix was in.
”The Democrats are lying, cheating, and stealing,” said campaign manager Bill Stepien during a call with reporters. “It’s happening all over this country.”
