Randy Falco - H 2015
AP Images/InvisionDays after severing all company ties with Donald Trump, Univision Communications president and CEO Randy Falco has opened up about his decision.
On Thursday, Falco announced that Univision would not air the Miss USA pageant because of Trump’s “insulting remarks about Mexican immigrants,” which he made June 16 when he announced his run for president.
In his speech, Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and as people bringing drugs and crime into the U.S. “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.… When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “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. And some, I assume, are good people.”
In a memo Monday, Falco informed his staff that “no one approached me, asked me or pressured me” to pull the upcoming broadcast, and discussed why he felt it imperative to end the company’s relationship with Trump and the entire Miss Universe Organization.
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Read Falco’s full memo:
There has been a lot of press recently around the decision related to Donald Trump and I want to address it with you so you understand the position taken. I made the decision to end business relationships with the Trump Organization simply because it was the right thing to do. No one approached me, asked me or pressured me to take this action. There have been a number of ridiculous assertions bordering on the bizarre, made from different people, that the Mexican government put pressure on us, that we were under political pressure to hurt a Republican candidate’s chances to the nomination, or that we were trying to assist other political candidates. None of this is remotely true. I can also assure you that we never apologized because we have nothing to apologize for.
At Univision, a U.S. based Company that proudly serves as the voice of Hispanics, we had to act according to our values as a mission driven company dedicated to serving our community. We cannot be associated with insulting and intolerant speech that brands an entire community of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. as people who bring drugs, crime and rape into our country. To the contrary, as I said in our statement, 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 took this action because it preserves the dignity of our community and our employees and our relationship with them.
I know a lot of us were angered and hurt by the comments made by Mr. Trump, but I want to ask you to be confident in our decision and dignified going forward. As offended as we were, we should not use, on any platform or communication, the same incendiary language we are standing against.
The response of our community has been inspiring and I’m grateful for how the diverse Hispanic community is uniting to stand up for what is right. We should continue to foster this unity by promoting positive dialogue through the hashtag #todosmexicanos.
Randy
Additional reporting by Marisa Guthrie.
