When Donald Trump ran for reelection in 2020, his campaign called Univision, the nations most influential Spanish-language network, a leftist propaganda machine and a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.
We shall treat them accordingly, top advisers promised.
Three years later, Trump is treating Univision and its new corporate owners like long-lost friends. He hosted a trio of its executives at Mar-a-Lago last week during an hour-long Univision interview that was notable for its gracious tone, starting with a question about how well he is doing among Latino voters in early general election polling.
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a friend of one of the executives, helped arrange the interview and was also in the room, according to multiple people familiar with the event.
All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. Theyre unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me, Trump said in response to the question about Latino voters.
The reversal has shocked Democrats who are preparing a massive ad campaign to brand Trump as hostile to Latino interests and some journalists inside Univision, who think that the past week has demonstrated the heavy hand of their new corporate bosses. The Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long fostered a close relationship with Mexican political leaders, merged with Univision in 2021.
The Democratic alarm further spiked two days later, when Univision advertising representatives told the Biden campaign that spots already purchased to run during the Trump interview in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida had been canceled owing to a heretofore unannounced policy about opposition advertising in single-candidate interviews.
Univision also canceled a booking with Bidens Hispanic Media Director Maca Casado to respond to the Trump interview after it aired on the networks late news broadcast, according to people familiar with the details, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Not since 2004, when former president George W. Bush outperformed expectations among Latino voters, has the Spanish-speaking population been so up for grabs in a presidential contest, according to early polling. Democrats now fear they are losing their access to a network that has been instrumental in past elections in aggressively reporting on Trumps immigration policies and their effect on Latino viewers.
The concerns were first raised in November 2022, when Univision took the unusual step of interrupting programming to cover Trumps Mar-a-Lago campaign announcement live. When Biden gave an Oct. 19 prime time address on Israel and Ukraine, the network cut away from the remarks midway, directing viewers to an online stream of the remarks, according to a Democratic media tracker.
The new ownership is essentially co-opting and kidnapping the soul and mission of what Univision has been up to now, and they are serving it up on a silver platter to Donald Trump, said Maria Cardona, a political consultant and member of the Democratic National Committee. It is going to mask the pernicious and dangerous politics that Donald Trump is going to implement if he becomes president again.
Semafor first reported the presence of three executives at the Nov. 7 interview TelevisaUnivision CEO Wade Davis as well as TelevisaUnivision Mexico co-CEOs Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega and Bernardo Gomez Martinez. Puck first reported the cancellation of ads and of the Biden official response to Trumps interview. The Biden and Trump campaigns declined to comment for this article.
Over multiple campaign cycles, Univisions news division has long fostered a reputation for challenging power with abrasive questions. As a result, Republicans have largely steered clear of its airwaves. ... Rather than use local talent for the interview, Univision flew in Enrique Acevedo, a journalist now working for Televisa in Mexico City, who has extensive experience reporting on politics in the United States. He co-moderated a 2016 Democratic presidential primary debate for Univision, and worked as a correspondent for CBS Newss 60 Minutes.
He left questions about immigration until the second half of the interview, avoided follow-ups and did not challenge Trump when he falsely claimed to have built a border wall paid for by Mexico or argued that President Barack Obama started the practice of child separation at the border. (Most of the Trump border wall was replacement fencing, and it covers a fraction of the border. There was no direct mechanism for Mexico to pay for it, despite an increase in trade tariffs. Obamas administration did sometimes separate migrant children from families in cases where the children were in danger, but did not separate families to deter border crossings like Trump.)
After the interview, Acevedo defended his approach on the social media platform X, suggesting a shift from the more confrontational style that has been Univisions calling card.
Im a reporter and my job is to ask questions, Acevado wrote in Spanish. Information should be the protagonist here.
I can't see how anyone except the Uber rich could see Slug Virus as anything but evil and destructive now. Orange Man Bad should be a badge of reason not a rebuke of reasonable people.
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Beware the fanatic! Too often his cure is deadlier by far than the evil he denounces!-Stan Lee RIP Make Arcades Great Again!