Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Univision executives meet with Trump at Mar a Lago as Jared Kushner friend helped arrange the interview and was also in the room.
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.
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 Biden’s Hispanic Media Director Maca Casado to respond to the Trump interview after it aired on the network’s 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.
Former President Donald Trump talked about turning “weaponized” government against his political opponents, defended his family separation policy, discussed the prospects for negotiations both between Israelis and Palestinians and the U.S. and Iran, and boasted about GOP gains with Latino voters in an interview with Univision set to air later today.
Semafor obtained a leaked early transcript of the interview, the network’s first since Trump booted Univision anchor Jorge Ramos out of a 2015 campaign event, an episode that did not come up in the conversation. Univision will run the hour-long taped interview between the former president and Enrique Acevedo on Thursday night at 10 PM ET.
The unusual structure of the interview has prompted some internal grumbling within Univision. According to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, the interview was largely organized by Televisa, the giant Mexican media company that owns Univision. While Acevedo, a former Univision and CBS broadcaster, is one of Mexico’s most widely-respected television journalists, the decision to give an anchor from Televisa an hour in primetime is unusual, network sources said, and some Univision staff told Semafor they would have preferred if the interviewer was a member of Univision staff — who tend to be more engaged in American politics.
“All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re 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.
