Latino group leader urges more businesses to cut ties from Trump; ‘We’re not going to take it’

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – The head of a Latino civil rights group called on more organizations to follow NBC’s example and cut business ties with Donald Trump.

Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, said Thursday that the PGA of America’s decision this week to move a golf tournament from a Trump-owned course was a step in the right direction.

The PGA and other major golf organizations should agree to keep tournaments off Trump properties in response to his comments about Mexican immigrants, Nogales said.

Trump’s representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The PGA said it relocated its Grand Slam of Golf in agreement with Trump.

Nogales’ comments followed a Q&A with NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt, part of a conference on Latinos in entertainment sponsored by the advocacy group.

NBC ended its partnership with Trump on the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants after the celebrity billionaire, in announcing his presidential campaign, said some Mexican immigrants to the U.S. bring drugs and crime, and some are rapists.

Nogales thanked Greenblatt, then moved on to a discussion of Hispanic-oriented shows planned by NBC. Among them: a drama in development about the settlement of California.

The Miss USA pageant that was to air on NBC will be carried Sunday instead by the Reelz cable and satellite channel, which has said Trump won’t profit from the telecast.

More fallout from the GOP candidate’s June remarks include the Macy’s department store chain decision’s to stop carrying an exclusive line of Trump menswear; Univision dropping its Spanish-language telecasts of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, and the end to a project that OraTV, a company backed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, said it was developing with Trump.

Trump has fought back with a $500 million lawsuit against Univision that claims breach of contract and defamation and says Univision turned on him because it supports Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.

Regarding Macy’s, Trump said he’d decided to end his relationship with the chain because of pressure put upon them by outside sources.

“Both Macy’s and NBC totally caved at the first sight of potential difficulty with special interest groups who are nothing more than professional agitators,” he said.

Nogales said he talked with Greenblatt a few days before the decision by NBC, a division of Comcast’s NBCUniversal, was announced June 29.

“The Latino community has finally come to a maturation tipping point,” Nogales said Thursday. “We’re not going to take it anymore, and we don’t have to.”

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Lynn Elber can be reached at lelber@ap.org and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lynnelber.