Angry Over Donald Trump Hosting Gig, Activists Take Aim At ‘SNL’ Advertisers
Despite the fact that this week’s SNL is a sketch comedy show, Donald Trump brings a lot of drama into the fold. The November 7 show has been in the works for weeks now, and ever since the controversial candidate was announced as the evening’s guest host, his detractors bemoaned NBC’s casting decision. As the night in question draws ever closer, activists are redirecting their anger from Donald Trump and network brass to the veritable Achilles’ heel of the mainstream media: its pocketbook.
Trump has appeared on Saturday Night Live in the past, but his previous skits were well before the controversy that has followed the billionaire turned presidential hopeful ever since he launched his campaign for high office. As previously reported by news outlets far and wide, Donald Trump first ran afoul of Hispanic Americans when he made derogatory comments regarding Mexicans during the speech in which he announced his bid for president. In the months that followed, he engaged in a public feud with Spanish-language network Univision that resulted in some hefty litigation. The Donald even bounced Univision’s top reporter Jorge Ramos from a public press conference after the journalist pressed Trump regarding his stance on immigration.
A prominent contingent of Hispanic advocacy organizations are stepping up their opposition to Trump’s forthcoming SNL gig in earnest after numerous appeals to NBC have apparently fallen upon unsympathetic ears. National Hispanic Media Coalition President and CEO Alex Nogales described an initiative that will extend well beyond Trump’s SNL episode. In comments published by Huffington Post, Nogales indicated his organization would focus upon NBC’s advertisers, urging them to pull spots for this Saturday.
“This is going to cost them. They had a lot of goodwill from the Latino community when they cut ties [with Trump], and here they are bringing this guy back on, and making him look like a respectable, legitimate, non-racist. In fact, he’s just the opposite … If it were gays and lesbians, and he said anything like this about them — if they were Jews, if they were blacks, you know very well that he wouldn’t be on this show. This shows a very unhealthy disrespect for Latinos.”
NBC News noted the controversy in a report late Wednesday by covering a “Dump Trump” rally held outside of the network’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York that delivered petitions bearing over half a million signatures urging NBC to rescind Trump’s hosting invitation. Brent Wilkes, the national director of the league of Latin American Citizens, recalled some of Trumps caustic statements made from the campaign trail.
“We believe this individual has been very divisive toward the Latino community. He’s called us rapists, murderers. He’s called us criminals. He’s called us drug dealers. And that’s extremely offensive to us. And there’s no space for someone like that on a comedy show like Saturday Night Live.”
For his part, Donald Trump is unmoved by all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding his big moment on the silver screen. True to form, the flamboyant Republican frontrunner seemed to be relish the hullabaloo in a series of promotional clips released by NBC earlier this evening. In fact, he was arguably too enthusiastic in a particular clip in which Trump referred to GOP rival Ben Carson as a “total loser.” That particular clip was apparently not intended for release and NBC later tweeted an apology for the caustic vignette.
Asked to comment on Donald Trump’s SNL shenanigans, Ben Carson referred to the alleged outtakes as “grade school” tactics.
[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
