Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “drug dealers.” Now, the country’s pageant organizers have decided they won’t send contestants to Trump’s Miss Universe pageant.
Two weeks after the real estate mogul angered many Mexicans with inflammatory remarks about immigrants to the United States, Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, which sends contestants to the pageant for the country, said in a statement that it would not be taking part in Miss Universe.
But that’s not the only Trump beauty contest losing support from its participants. The hosts of the Miss USA pageant, Thomas Roberts and Cheryl Burke, quit on Tuesday. Burke, a former contestant on Dancing with the Stars, singled out Trump’s comments in a Facebook post:
The latest double blow to Trump’s beauty pageant franchise comes a day after NBC announced it was not going to air Miss USA “due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.” Spanish language network Univision announced earlier it too would not air the pageant, for the same reasons.
Trump is now suing Univision for $500 million under the First Amendment for, the suit said, a “politically motivated attempt to suppress Mr. Trump’s freedom of speech … as he begins to campaign for the nation’s presidency.”
Trump said at his campaign launch for the Republican presidential nomination that immigrants coming across the Mexican border were “rapists” and insinuated immigrants were drug dealers; he has proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border that he would make the Mexican government pay for.
And the outspoken entrepreneur does not seem eager to back down. On Tuesday, he took to his Twitter account to reiterate his claims about the country south of the border:
The pageant is set to continue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 12.
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Write to Tanya Basu at tanya.basu@time.com