A media company owned by Carlos Slim would have begun production on a show featuring US mogul Donald Trump just this week, before the unnamed program was canceled over Trump’s incendiary statements about Mexican immigrants.
Ora TV, an on-demand digital television company that Slim launched in 2012 with cable-news figure Larry King, said on Monday it was severing ties with Trump after he said Mexico “sends” rapists and criminals to the United States.
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Slim, who is Mexican, is the second richest person on Earth.
Trump would have appeared on the show and production was slated to begin this week, Ora TV chairman Arturo Elias told VICE News in an interview on Tuesday.
“It was a program that involved the businesses of real estate and Miss Universe, and he in his role as a personality was going to comment about these things,” said Elias.
The Ora TV chairman declined to divulge further details because the production company involved has not made its position public. Trump’s call for an impenetrable wall at the US-Mexico border was totally “out of context” in a world “where walls are being torn down,” Elias said.
“It’s difficult to work with people who don’t share your values,” Elias said. “For us, inclusivity is a very important value.”
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The split with Ora TV is part of a string of contract cancellations that Trump is facing since lambasting Mexico and Mexican immigrants during his June 16 speech announcing his bid for the US presidency.
Trump has partially backtracked, saying last Thursday: “I have great respect for Mexico and love the Mexican people, but my loyalty is to the United States and making our country great again!”
Nonetheless, Trump has stuck to his statements, referring obtusely to “trade deals” with Mexico that he calls detrimental to the United States, and calling out “FIGHT!” via Twitter. Mexico is currently the United States’ third largest global trading partner.
Major media companies have since replied by flexing their financial muscle against Trump’s television enterprises.
On Monday, NBCUniversal, home of Trump’s reality-television series “Celebrity Apprentice” (formerly “The Apprentice”), said it was ending its relationship with the mogul, but continuing the show.
Trump is said to pocket $65 million from NBC as the program’s star and executive producer, according to financial news reports. Trump said he would be suing.
Late last week, US Spanish-language broadcaster Univision — the leading broadcaster in any language in the United States — canceled a deal to air Trump’s beauty pageants “Miss Universe” and “Miss USA.”
That deal was worth $13.5 million over five years, Trump told Politico.
Separately, the world’s largest Spanish-language broadcaster, Mexico’s Televisa, also said on Monday it would break all ties with Trump, resulting in unknown losses.
That means that so far Trump has lost contracts worth a minimum total of $78.5 million. That amount does not include any expected profit losses from the break with Ora TV or with Televisa.
Mexico won’t be sending a contestant to the Miss Universe pageant at all, Mexico’s first ever Miss Universe Lupita Jones said on Tuesday.
To top it all off, a Latino-owned microbrewery in Chicago also decided to stop doing business with Trump. 5 Rabbit Cerveceria (drawing its name from the Aztec calendar) said on Monday it would no longer send its craft brews up to serve at the Rebar lounge at the Trump Tower in Chicago.
Donald Trump is the 405th richest person on Earth, worth about $4.1 billion, according to the 2015 world’s richest list by Forbes. Carlos Slim, by contrast, is worth $77.1 billion on the list, second only to Bill Gates.
By Tuesday afternoon, the Trump Organization said in a statement it has filed a $500 million suit against Univision for abruptly canceling its contract to broadcast the Miss USA pageant, which is scheduled for July 12.
Losing $78.5 million in business over anti-Mexican comments might be a pile of loose change, but for a figure known as a ferocious businessman, Trump’s canceled contracts gotta hurt at least a little.
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Follow Daniel Hernandez on Twitter @longdrivesouth.