At this point most people know frequently broke casino owner, reality show star and sentient wad of orange cotton candy Donald Trump did something totally out of character recently and made an ass of himself. To recap: In mid-June, while announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, Trump took time to heap insults on immigrants from Mexico. Immigrants, he said into a microphone that was on, “have lots of problems” and are “bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” Surprisingly (to Trump, anyway), a lot of Hispanic people took exception to this.Shortly after Trump’s mouth spewed forth, Univision—the largest Spanish language station in the world—unsurprisingly announced it was ending its business dealings with Trump and would not be broadcasting the upcoming Miss USA Pageant, which Trump owns. Trump, never one to back down from a mistake, refused to apologize for his remarks and accused the Mexican government of “forcing Univision to get me to stop.” Why? Because, according to one of Trump’s endless Twitter rants, the Mexican government “doesn’t want me talking about terrible border situation & horrible trade deals.” Days later Trump filed a $500 million lawsuit accusing Univision of violating his First Amendment rights (demonstrating Trump understands the Constitution as well as he understands foreign diplomacy). In the lawsuit he altered his original conspiracy theory, saying Hillary Clinton was now behind it all, having talked the chief Univision Communications investor, billionaire TV mogul (and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” creator) Haim Saban, into bumping his stupid beauty pageant for … reasons.By June 29, NBCUniversal announced it was also ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump “due to the recent derogatory statements.” NBC is co-producer of the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants as well as Trump’s other major TV effort, the hit reality show “The Apprentice.” This marks the first time in 11 years NBC is not airing Miss USA. Trump responded by calling NBCUniversal “weak and foolish” and later suggested it was his idea to sever ties with NBC because the network wanted him to host “The Apprentice” rather than run for president. (As a candidate, he’s barred by equal-time rules from appearing on a regular TV gig.) Within the span of a week, dozens of sponsors and advertisers joined the parade of people walking away from Trump. Miss USA cohosts Thomas Roberts and Cheryl Burke gave the competition the brush-off. Most of the judges resigned. Performers Flo Rida, Natalie La Rose and Craig Wayne Boyd dropped out. Nearly every other Spanish language network washed their hands of it. Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica announced they were proactively boycotting Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant. Finally, to add insult to injury, Macy’s announced it was ending its longtime partnership over Donald Trump’s clothing line (which, cherry on the irony sundae, is made in Mexico).There are a few rays of sunshine in Trump’s world, however. He got plenty of publicity—which, realistically speaking, is the only reason he’s doing any of this. He’s the number two candidate (behind Jeb Bush) in Republican polls (even though—let’s be honest—he has no real intention of actually becoming president). And late last week, Reelz Channel announced it picked up rights to the Miss USA telecast, ensuring that the literally dozens of people who care about the annual beauty pageant will get to see it.
“The Miss USA Pageant” will air Sunday, July 12, at 6pm on Reelz.
