Trump fired from NBC

Photo above: Donald Trump during his announcement declaring his candidacy for president. (YouTube)

Earlier today (Monday, June 29, 2015) NBCUniversal announced they were cutting ties to Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and pitchman who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. In the course of his remarks during his official announcement Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals, saying, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

He added the caveat, “And some, I assume, are good people.” But it was too late. A day later Trump said he stood by his words.

NBCUniversal said they would remove Trump from the popular Celebrity Apprentice TV show and replace him with another, well known business leader and drop all of Trump’s beauty pageant shows from its channels. Those would include the Miss USA and Miss Universe contests.

The network said it would continue working with Mark Burnett’s United Artists Media Group, the production company that owns and produces Celebrity Apprentice.

In a statement released on Monday, June 29, NBCUniversal said “At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values. Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.”

Trump will be hard-pressed to find a national broadcaster for his beauty pageants; Spanish-speaking people are the fastest growing demographic in the nation and advertisers — and networks — understand the implications of insulting such a large group of viewers.

The Spanish language network, Univision, had already cut its ties to Trump. They broadcast the beauty pageants for the Spanish language audience here in the United States, and had high ratings for both pageants.

Their statements said, “Today, the entertainment division of Univision Communications Inc. announced that it is ending the Company’s business relationship with the Miss Universe Organization, which is part-owned by Donald J. Trump, based on his recent, insulting remarks about Mexican immigrants. At Univision, we see first-hand the work ethic, love for family, strong religious values and the important role Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans have had and will continue to have in building the future of our country. We will not be airing the Miss USA pageant on July 12th or working on any other projects tied to the Trump Organization.

Univision News and the local news division will continue to provide comprehensive coverage of all candidates, including Mr. Trump, to ensure our audience continues to have access to all points of view.”

After Univision made it announcements Trump fired back, saying “Mexican leadership has been doing serious damage to the United States by out-negotiating our representatives. They are taking our jobs, taking our money and at the same time killing us at the border with illegals from all over the world freely flowing into our country.”

In a message on Twitter Trump claimed the Mexican government was forcing Univision to drop Trump from the network.

A petition was started to convince NBC to severe its ties with Trump, but the network didn’t wait for that to gain much momentum before taking action.

Trump is still running for president and recently came in second, behind Jeb Bush, in a New Hampshire poll of likely GOP voters. The Republican fringe may find his rhetoric appealing, but it isn’t likely he will gain much traction with the rest of the GOP and mainstream voters.