Donald Trump announces his bid for the presidency in the 2016 race during an event at the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York on June 16, 2015 -© AFP/File
NEW YORK: NBC severed business ties Monday with Donald Trump, joining a chorus of protests over the mogul turned US presidential hopeful’s remarks about Mexican immigrants.
This means the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants — Trump owns the broadcast rights — will not be aired on NBC, which is a unit of Comcast.
And Trump will no longer appear in the NBC reality show “The Apprentice,” where he had been a star attraction.
The NBC television network’s announcement came four days after Univision, the leading broadcaster in the US Spanish-language TV market, also broke with the Miss Universe Organization.
Trump has angered many in America with comments he made in announcing his run for the Republican presidential nomination last week. Hispanics are the country’s fastest growing minority, and the majority of US Hispanics are of Mexican descent and origin.
In a rambling 45-minute speech, Trump said: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.”
He added: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Billionaire Trump’s comments triggered criticism both in the United States and Mexico.
Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong called them “prejudiced and absurd.”
Hispanic and migrant advocacy groups slammed Trump, while Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton called his remarks inflammatory.
But Trump will not back down. Over the weekend he said Mexico should pay for a wall along the border between it and the United States.
“I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall,” Trump said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Trump insisted “you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad.”
“I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over, that are killers, and rapists,” he said.
On the wall, he said: “Mexico has not treated us well. Mexico treats us as though we are stupid people. Which, of course, our leaders are.” -AFP