The Spanish-language network Univision interviewed former President Donald Trump this month and allowed him to respond to questions without interruption or personal attacks. It was like every interview the legacy media have conducted with President Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. So, of course, leftist Latino groups, terrified this shift reflects the changing political views of Univision’s audience, are throwing a hissy fit.
More than 70 Democratic Party-affiliated groups and some individuals, including the actor John Leguizamo, have signed a letter crying foul. This includes left-of-the-left groups such as La Raza (now going by the name UnidosUS), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The Washington Post reported that more than 70 groups sent the letter Nov. 17 to Wade Davis, a Univision executive, and other executives at the media company. Univision, which is formally known as TelevisaUnivision after it was acquired by Mexican media giant Televisa in 2021, is the largest Spanish-language media outfit in the U.S.
“We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” the letter said, according to The Washington Post, which also said the letter called the interview “a betrayal of trust.”
“This trust has been betrayed. It is beyond alarming to learn that Univision’s leadership is giving former President Donald Trump—the most anti-Latino and anti-immigrant president in modern American history—unquestioned access and allowed him to spread falsehoods unchecked,” the letter added, according to a separate report by The Messenger.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is taking things to a different level. According to The Washington Post and The Messenger, it is planning to send Univision its own letter. It will also demand that executives meet with members of the caucus.
At this point, it is important to remember that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is not a real caucus of members of Congress of Hispanic descent since it refuses membership to Republicans. It is, therefore, simply an arm of the Democratic Party, and this request would amount to a party demand for partisan coverage of the 2024 campaign.
La Raza and MALDEF are also far-left groups with little or no grassroots components. They represent the views of radical funders such as financier George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Service Employees International Union, etc.
La Raza, founded with seed money from the Ford Foundation in the late 1960s (as was MALDEF) to promote identity politics and the concept of an official Hispanic category, means literally “The Race” in Spanish—a name so redolent of racial politics that the organization changed it to UnidosUS in 2017.
As for Leguizamo, he is so caught up in identity politics that last year he protested the casting of James Franco as Fidel Castro in a movie—not because Castro was a monstrous dictator who enslaved Cubans for decades, but because Franco “ain’t Latino.” This ignored, of course, that Franco’s father’s family hailed from Portugal, which is just a few miles south of where Castro’s father was born in Galicia, Spain.
One thing CHC, La Raza, MALDEF, or the snake-bitten Leguizamo do not do is speak for Hispanics, let alone conservative Hispanics, whom these groups revile. They are not “major Latino advocacy groups,” as The Washington Post put it in its coverage, and whatever they say should not be interpreted as a “growing backlash” against the Trump interview.
A few of us conservatives of Hispanic descent sent our own letter to Davis and the other Univision executives cautioning them to ignore the leftist criticism. Of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ letter, we wrote, “If sent, this letter would constitute a direct attack on a free and independent press and a form of electoral interference.”
The reality is that the leftist groups are trying desperately to stem the tide of growing support for the former president by these people. Trump won almost 40% of their vote in 2020, a modern high-water mark. (Mitt Romney and John McCain, by comparison, won about 27% of that vote in 2012 and 2008, respectively.) The Washington Post itself recently put Hispanic support for Trump at an unheard-of 42%.
Executives at Univision are also likely keeping an eye on these growing numbers and acting accordingly. For years, the network was a hard-left platform that did not hide its bias. In 2015, then-CEO Isaac Lee compared conservatives to Nazis and said his reporters should cover them the way Word War II reporters covered Hitler.
“If you are an American journalist covering the Second World War, it’s not a problem for you to want the Nazis to lose,” Lee said back then.
Of course, this was the same Lee that The Washington Post quoted as the standard-bearer of journalistic integrity. He told The Post that he trusted that Univision’s reporters would do the right thing. “I trust that their heart and their mind is in the right place,” he said.
Of course, polls tell us that this heart beats to the right now.
Originally published at WashingtonExaminer.com
Original here. Reproduced with permission.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush administration, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and is the author of the book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.” Read his research.
