If Arizona is back in play and President Donald Trump keeps his leads in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, he wins. That's what will likely happen, despite the push by a conformist media to deny it—I'm talking about Fox News toeing the line with CNN and MSNBC on the election so far. Daytime anchors seem to care more about what Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer think of them as peers than about objectively looking at the vote totals.
Americans—all of us—are realizing we were fed a narrative that was untrue, that was biased, that was so wrong that both sides will feel cheated if the other side wins. If you are in the Biden camp, you were told by CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook and Google that Biden would win in a landslide. If you are in the Trump camp, you were told by Fox News, Twitter, Facebook and Google that Biden would win in a landslide.
The biggest losers in this election, aside from the American people, are those who lost credibility with their less-than-honest forecasts. These cheerleaders pushed their biases on the electorate, saying they had corrected their mistakes of 2016. They had not—they doubled down.
Americans are now suspicious that if Trump wins the election it will have been stolen from Biden—and that if Biden wins, it will have been stolen from Trump. The cheerleaders did not predict a close election and prepare Americans for the chaos of a tight race. They said there was little chance that Trump could win, but here we are.
The American people were fed a false narrative. We need to look at the press, the pundits and the pollsters with a level of skepticism that we haven't before. Distrust of the press and polls is at an all-time high for good reason. This election will cement the view that polls can't be trusted, that the media is cheerleading outcomes and that pundits should be dismissed.
If the press, the pundits and the polling were wrong, then why assume the Associated Press was right about Arizona—a state that was called for Biden far too early and looks like it's going to Trump? Arizona should be pulled out of the Biden win column and put in the undecided column.
Arizona needs to be declared back in play—because it is in play and the Trump campaign believes the president will win it by 30 to 40 thousand votes. Arizona will give Trump the win.
The media will do all it can to keep Arizona in the Biden column, call Nevada and declare the election over. Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, where the Trump campaign says it has insurmountable leads, should have already been called on the Electoral College map.
Over the last four months, I have toured lockdown states and battleground states, which were most often one and the same. In order to gauge whether Trump will win, one has to talk to the voters who will have to defeat him. I learned from my atmospheric methodology that few anti-Trump voters believed the press and the polls touting a Biden landslide.
I've interviewed hundreds of anti-Trump Republican, Democrat and independent women across these states, the majority of whom (60 percent) are Latino and African American. Why women? Because they know who their inner circle is voting for and they are the most offended by Trump.
I asked three questions repeatedly in my travels to battleground states: "Who do you want to win?" "Who do you think will win?" and "Why?"
Six in ten of the women I interviewed wanted Biden to win but believed Trump would. They believed it because of the economy and Americans' desire for law and order. They didn't believe the cheerleaders in the media, they didn't trust the polls and they remembered 2016.
Biden supporters should be just as upset as Trump supporters with the narrative they were fed by the press, pundits and pollsters. If Trump wins, they should blame the cheerleaders for the pep rallies of 2020.
Michael Pregent is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former Middle East-focused intelligence officer. Follow him at @mppregent on Twitter.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
