After Donald Trump made a whirlwind of unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, some of his most loyal media allies -- including Fox News -- appeared to distance themselves from the president.
Mr Trump fronted the media on Friday to claim without evidence that Democrats were attempting to “steal the election”.
"If you count the legal votes I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us," he claimed.
The three big broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — cut away from President Trump’s news conference while Fox News and CNN kept it rolling.
“We have to interrupt here, because the president made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” said NBC news anchor Lester Holt.
“There’s a lot to unpack here and fact-check,” said ABC anchor David Muir as he broke through the conference.
The stance taken by the three major networks against the misinformation of Trump’s campaign is standard, but Fox News’ response has surprised many.
US President Donald Trump. Source: AAP
During the Friday press conference, the president falsely declared he’d won the swing state of Pennsylvania and was “on track to win” another key battleground, Arizona. The votes in these states are still being counted.
Along with the Associated Press, Fox News forecast Mr Biden’s victory in Arizona before CNN and many other mainstream US outlets had done so.
Following Fox News’ decision, the New York Times reported that Mr Trump’s team contacted Fox News to complain and that his son-in-law Jared Kushner contacted media proprietor Rupert Murdoch.
The early election call by the network enraged some Trump supporters, who took to the streets in Arizona, chanting “Fox News sucks” in unison.
Fox News commentator Sean Hannity also derided the network’s decision to call Arizona early claiming, "any call of Arizona was premature, based on everybody I have talked to that knows the numbers out there."
Along with Mr Hannity, Fox News’ line-up features some of Mr Trump’s most vocal defenders, including Ms Ingraham and the hosts of Fox & Friends. However, the president has been critical of its news division.
Appearing on the network ahead of the election, Mr Trump slammed Fox News for airing press conferences of former US president Barack Obama and Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
“Fox has changed a lot and somebody said ‘what’s the biggest difference between this and four years ago?’ and I said ‘Fox’,” Mr Trump said.
But pressure from the Trump campaign has not deterred the network, with Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt casting doubt on the president’s baseless claims about electoral fraud.
“Lawsuits, schmawsuits,” Mr Stirewalt said on Friday. “We haven’t seen any evidence yet that there’s anything wrong.”
While another US arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, The New York Post, called out the president over his “unfounded claim that political foes were trying to steal the election from him.”
“At the podium on Thursday evening, Mr Trump vowed that much more litigation was coming and sought to sow as much confusion on the process as possible,” the paper claimed.
Meanwhile, in Australia, media commentator Andrew Bolt backflipped on his earlier claims that “Donald Trump seems to have won again”, later clarifying the “late count swings to Biden”.
The commentator surprised many when he later said that he hoped Trump would stop “recklessly claiming he's been cheated out of a win” because “I can’t see any evidence of fraud”.
“I hope Donald Trump will leave the White House with dignity. I hope he will leave office without trashing faith in democracy,” Mr Bolt said on Sky News.
A day earlier, Mr Bolt had written that the upcoming election result meant “now we can laugh at the race-baiters who insisted Donald Trump was racist, at mainstream media for demonising him for four years and above all, at the Left.”
In October, Mr Bolt penned another column claiming ABC journalists had presented Mr Trump as a “fascist intent on destroying democracy when in fact, the truth is far from it.”
The changing sentiment of President Trump’s former media allies comes as Americans anxiously await the final results from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, South Carolina and Alaska.
At the time of publishing, Joe Biden is gaining ground in Georgia, while his lead in Arizona is narrowing, with many pundits speculating Mr Biden has the easier path to gaining the 270 votes required for election victory.
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