- Stirewalt told the January 6 panel of Trump's diminishing chances of victory after Nov. 7, 2020.
- He said that a recount could potentially shift hundreds of votes, but huge changes in multiple states was a reach.
- "I mean, you're better off to play the Powerball than to have that come in," he said of Trump's predicament.
Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt on Monday said that President Donald Trump had virtually no chance of winning the 2020 presidential election after losing Arizona and lagging in enough key purple states.
During his testimony before the January 6 committee investigating the Capitol riot, Stirewalt — who was fired from Fox in January 2021 — told the panel of the improbability of a Trump victory after most networks called the national election for Joe Biden on November 7, 2020.
Trump was incensed that Fox's decision desk called Arizona for Biden before most other news outlets did, but Stirewalt felt confident in his team's conclusion. Biden won the state by roughly 11,000 votes out of nearly 3.4 million ballots cast.
"We were able to make a call early," Stirewalt told the panel. "We were able to beat the competition."
Stirewalt spoke of the vast importance of Arizona — along with other swing states, including Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — in the 2020 presidential contest.
With Biden set to win Arizona and the outcome in several other swing states still up in the air on Election night, Stirewalt spoke of how he tried to prepare viewers for the initial results, which would show Republicans sweeping the Election Day vote — the result of Trump urging his supporters to only vote in-person on November 3 — while yet-to-be-counted mail-in votes would shift many races toward Democrats.
"We had gone to pains — and I'm proud of the pains we went to to make sure that we were informing viewers that this was going to happen because the Trump campaign and the president had made it clear that they were going to try to exploit this anomaly," Stirewalt said. "And we knew it was going to be bigger, because the percentage of early votes was higher."
When Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California — who sits on the January 6 committee member — asked Stirewalt about Trump's chances of victory after November 7, his response was clear.
"None," the former Fox News news staffer told the congresswoman.
Stirewalt went on to remark that while a recount could potentially shift hundreds of votes, it would be a stretch for several thousands votes to change in the contingent of swing states that Trump needed to win.
"It's always possible that you could have a truckload of ballots be found somewhere, I suppose," he told the committee. "Ahead of today I thought about what are the largest margins that could ever be overturned by a recount ... in a recount, you're talking about hundreds of votes."
He added: "When we think about that margin ... you're talking about 1,000 votes, 1,500 votes ... normally you're talking about hundreds of votes."
Trump needed thousands of votes to change in multiple states to have a shot at overcoming Biden, which Stirewalt said just wasn't a real possibility given the history of such outcomes.
"He needed three of these states to change," he told the panel. "And in order to do that, I mean, you're better off to play the Powerball than to have that come in."
Trump still falsely claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite the lack of evidence pointing to any sort of mass voter fraud.