Despite Saturating The Airwaves, Trump Has Yet To Sit Down With Hispanic Media

Despite giving generous amounts of interview time to nearly every other broadcast news network, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has yet to sit down with the largest Spanish-language news network.

In roughly nine months of campaigning, Trump has saturated the airwaves with all sorts of media appearances, even taking advantage of unprecedented phone-interview privileges on nearly every major broadcast news network. Yet, the candidate has not granted Univision, the largest Spanish-language network, a single interview, and his campaign has repeatedly blocked Hispanic media journalists from attending his events or asking questions at them, even while granting press credentials to white nationalist media.

Univision's Jorge Ramos first attempted to get face time with Trump in June, seeking to confront him for his vitriolic anti-immigrant remarks, but Trump responded by publishing the journalist's personal contact information online and mocking Univision for “begging” him for an interview. In August, Trump threw Ramos out of a press conference in Iowa, saying, “Go back to Univision,” after Ramos attempted to question the candidate about his immigration plan. One day after settling a lawsuit with the network in February, Trump vowed to grant Ramos an interview, but Ramos told CNN's Reliable Sources on March 20 that he is "'still waiting.'"

Ramos hasn't been the only Hispanic journalist targeted by Trump's anti-press antics. The candidate also shut down Telemundo's José Díaz-Balart, another highly visible Hispanic journalist in the United States, during a press conference, calling on the reporter only to tell him, “You're finished!” and to say that Telemundo should be “ashamed,” before touting his $500 million lawsuit against Univision. Trump did sit for an interview with Diaz-Balart in June, prior to the press conference.

Hispanic media has contributed meaningful coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, by conducting fact checks and relentlessly holding candidates accountable, and many Latinos say Univision is their most trusted institution, second only to the Catholic Church.

Data demonstrates that in order to win the White House, Republican presidential candidates will need to garner at least 40 percent of the Latino vote, which makes Donald Trump's decision to ignore the platforms that can effectively reach this important constituency particularly perplexing.

CORRECTION: The original piece erroneously stated that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had not done interviews with either Univision and Telemundo. In fact, while the candidate has not submitted to an interview with Univision, the biggest Spanish-language network, he sat for one interview with Telemundo in June.