Conservatives love to complain about the media.

But there's an inside baseball media that reveals how destructive the conservative media criticism environment can be to the conservative movement.

Enter, Fox News:

The story is pretty simple.

On election night, Fox News called Arizona very early. This surprised pretty much everyone. The Fox News team had improved their election model in 2020, and was confident their call was correct, even if unconventional.

Controversially, however, they called it for Joe Biden. Arizona has historically been a red state, and the polls (and final result) were close there. Nobody had a really strong expectation it was gonna go for Biden until Fox News just.... called it.

This hurled Trump surrogates into a desperate place. If they lost *Arizona*, that was a bad sign for the night. More importantly, it happened before midnight: it humiliated the President while millions were still watching.

The Trump campaign immediately turned on a dime. They pivoted from "Look, we're crushing it with Hispanics! Massive turnout! Incredible performance!" to "The election was stolen."

Who stole the election changed over time. Fox News. Some rando in Atlanta. Poll workers. China.