Trump was convinced he'd win on election night in a repeat of 2016 and was said to be 'yelling at everyone' when Fox News called Arizona for Biden

• President Donald Trump and top aides were convinced on election night that Trump would upset the odds and clinch victory as he did in 2016, The Washington Post reported.
• But when Fox News' decision desk projected that Joe Biden had flipped the key swing state of Arizona, the president was "yelling at everyone," a senior administration official told The Post.
• In the weeks since losing the election, Trump has refused to concede and has made baseless claims attacking the election's integrity.

President Donald Trump was convinced he would win on election night early this month, and exploded with anger when Fox News projected that the Democrats had flipped Arizona, The Washington Post reported.

According to a behind-the-scenes look in The Post at Trump's unprecedented bid to overturn the election result, Trump's baseless claims of election fraud arose from a calculation he made on election night.

A key turning point was said to be when Fox News' decision desk projected that Joe Biden had become the first Democrat to win Arizona since 1996, a loss that seriously restricted Trump's credible paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.

According to The Post, Trump on election night had gathered in a White House room with top aides, including his son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, and his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, to monitor the results.

The Post said that Trump had previously acknowledged the possibility of losing but entered election night expecting to win. He was far behind Biden in political polls, meaning victory would've been a repeat of 2016, when Trump pulled off a shock win over Hillary Clinton.

Early on election night, Trump built an overall lead against Biden and was projected the winner in Florida.

But then Fox News — usually the network most staunchly loyal to the president — followed the lead of its decision desk and projected that Arizona, which had not chosen a Democratic presidential candidate since President Bill Clinton in 1996, had flipped for Biden.

That all but eliminated a direct repeat of 2016, when Trump swiftly built an unassailable Electoral College lead.

Read more: Joe Biden is hiring about 4,000 political staffers to work in the White House and federal agencies. Here's how you can boost your chances getting a job in the new administration, according to 3 experts.

"He was yelling at everyone," a senior administration official told The Post. "He was like, 'What the hell? We were supposed to be winning Arizona. What's going on?'" The official added that Trump told Kushner to call Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation.

Trump's attempt to persuade Fox to retract the projection proved unsuccessful, and while other decision desks did not call the state as early as Fox News' did, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is expected to certify Biden's win in the state on Monday.

In the weeks since election night, Trump has continued to make baseless claims attacking the integrity of the election. A slew of legal challenges to election results in swing states have been rejected in courts.

He has stepped up his war on Fox News, and in a tweet on Saturday the president described the network as "virtually unwatchable" and hyped the right-wing networks OANN and Newsmax.