Donald Trump and Univision have settled the lawsuit over Miss USA and Miss Universe telecasts, which were dropped by the latter last year after Trump made unfavorable remarks about Mexican immigrants.
In a report by Variety, Trump said in a speech after announcing his candidacy for the presidential race this 2016 that undocumented Mexican immigrants were "rapists." His exact words are as follows: "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." This has stirred backlash and outrage from many people including Univision.
Prior to the decision of dropping Miss USA and Miss Universe telecasts, Univision just signed a five-year deal with the Miss Universe Organization for U.S. Spanish-language TV rights. The Miss Universe franchise at that time was jointly owned by Trump Organization and NBCUniversal.
According to New York Post, NBC was also forced to join Univision in dropping the July 12 Miss USA telecast to show its protest against Trump's remarks about Mexican immigrants,
The Miss USA pageant was then aired on the independent network called ReelzChannel. The sudden redirection of the pageant has caused a fraction of the audience as compared to the typical number of viewers when the pageant was aired on NBC.
Trump then filed a $500 million lawsuit against Univision and claimed that Democratic fundraiser Haim Saban who owns the company drove the its decision to back out of the contract citing political interference. Per court documents, the five-year deal of Univision was valued at $13.5 million.
Trump also filed a lawsuit against NBC that was settled much earlier. , Fortune reported that the grounds for the settlement included the agreement that Trump will buy the remainder of the pageant's owner which he sold to the WME/IMG talent agency last September.
Going back to Univision, it reportedly banned its employees from engaging in work-related business at any Trump-owned facility such as Trump's National Doral luxury hotel.
The rest of the details of the settlement have not been revealed. However, Trump stressed that he has "known Univision's president and CEO, Randy Falco, for more than 20 years," and he is glad that they are able to put these differences behind them. Falco also said the same for Trump.
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