It dawned on me as I watched Sunday's edition of Al Punto, carefully scanning each word, utterance and question in search of an instance of left-wing bias, amnesty advocacy, or ethnic vitiation. Univision's relationship with Donald Trump, far from being adversarial or confrontational, is now symbiotic.
Al Punto could not be bothered to cover last week's fiery Republican debate in Houston, Texas (which, for the benefit of my Facebook friends, I summed up as Donald Trump becoming the ham in a Cuban Sandwich). There was no mention of the joint Rubio/Cruz takedown of Trump, nor was there the usual panel consisting of Bush and Clinton surrogates and their respective talking point exchanges. Instead, Jorge Ramos and crew proceeded as if the debate never happened.
There are some who may speculate that the de facto blackout was born out of pique at Univison being shut out of this debate cycle (although there is a joint Republican forum with the Washington Post in the near future). Perhaps the network chose to censor Marco Rubio's destruction of María Celeste Arrarás carefully constructed traps on DACA and Puerto Rico, as well as Ted Cruz' rejection of her attempt to accuse them of betraying their communities. But despite the debate blackout, the network found a way to work Trump into most segments, per the show's practice.
Since his inflammatory campaign announcement, Univision has pushed Trump as this seemingly unstoppable monster who is going to deport everyone and their mother, but not before first making them pay for the wall. Trump is the question asked of most interviewees regardless of background. Celebrities, actors, musicians...they must all weigh in. Trump is the reaction question asked of all politicians, and is the unnamed specter that looms over Univision's fancy new multi-platform voter registration and turnout efforts.
Today CBS Executive Chairman Leslie Moonves let slip the media's truth about Trump, which is that wall-to-wall coverage of his candidacy is best for business. This is especially the case at Univision, where Trump is continuously leveraged into the useful "monster" for both ratings and votes.
As of this writing, Univision News has not yet covered revelations of tapes in posession of the New York Times which, if corroborated to be true, could be severely damaging to the aura of Trump's toughness on immigration - the very thing at the center of Univision's coverage of his campaign. Like I said, symbiotic.
