Ivanka Trump reveals White House election night tension after Fox called Arizona for Biden

More testimony of Ivanka Trump was played on Monday at the second public hearing of the January 6 committee.

A good part of the day’s discussions were focused on the moment that Fox News called Arizona in favour of Joe Biden, a move that sealed Donald Trump’s election night defeat to the 46th president.

Ivanka Trump was asked about her own advice to the president in that moment when the Trump campaign contested the network’s call, telling the committee: “I don’t know that I had a firm view as to what he should say in that circumstance. The results were still being counted.”

Her remark revealed the panic behind the scenes at the Trump campaign which was beginning to come to terms (with the exception of Mr Trump himself) that the election was ending in defeat.

The Trump campaign furiously made demands for Fox to retract its call of Arizona as election night dragged on, both in public comments from surrogates and privately in conversations with executives. But the call was never retracted and Arizona’s official results, even after an audit, mirrored Fox’s call.

As more of the January 6 committee’s testimony unfolds it has become clear that Mr Trump ignored advice from lawyers, campaign officials and his own family to instead listen to Rudy Giuliani, his longtime personal attorney, who reportedly urged him to declare victory after it had become clear he would not win the election. Some testimony from Monday’s hearing indicates that Mr Giuliani gave that advice under the influence of alcohol.

Ivanka Trump’s refusal to accept the lies spread by Mr Trump’s team after the 2020 election, which included but was by no means limited to insisting that long-dead Venezuelan socialist Hugo Chavez was behind efforts to rob the president of victory, was of no surprise on Monday.

The president’s daughter made embarassing headlines for her father last week after the first public hearing of the January 6 committee with testimony to the panel that showed how she accepted the attorney general’s explanation that fraud could not have changed the election results.