Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart asked Helen Aguirre Ferré, the Republican National Committee’s Hispanic outreach director, to help him get an interview with Donald Trump this week. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has only given one interview to a Hispanic media network since announcing his presidential run.
During the July 17 edition of Telemundo’s Sunday interview show, Enfoque, Díaz-Balart requested Aguirre Ferré’s help, saying, “Helen Aguirre, what I want is for you to help me get Donald Trump in this chair with us this week, to talk more clearly about these details, but you’re always so kind being here with me.” Díaz-Balart, a Telemundo and NBC anchor, is regarded as one of the “most prominent voices in Hispanic journalism in the United States.”
Trump’s presidential run has been marked by clashes with Hispanic media, including denying press credentials to Univision correspondent Lourdes Del Rio, ejecting Univision’s Jorge Ramos from a press conference, publishing Ramos’ personal contact information on social media, and shutting down Díaz-Balart at a press conference by telling him “You’re finished” and that Telemundo “should be ashamed.”
Despite the anemic support he’s receiving from the Hispanic community, Trump has granted only one interview to a Hispanic media network, sitting down with Telemundo back in June of 2015. To date, he has continued to ignore requests for an interview from Univision, the largest Hispanic network. In a recent sign that Univision is still attempting to get an interview with Trump, Jorge Ramos revealed on July 18 that Trump had reached out to him with a “personal” letter, whose contents have not yet been disclosed.
In marked contrast, Trump has given Fox News 3 hours and 20 minutes of interview time in the month of June alone. If Aguirre Ferré manages to grant Díaz-Balart’s request, it would mark a break in Trump’s pattern of largely ignoring Hispanic media, even though the Spanish-language outlets have proved their value in their coverage of the 2016 election. But Aguirre Ferré, who was critical of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate before joining the RNC, has noted that she has yet to meet Trump.
UPDATE: Ramos has become the second Hispanic journalist this week to request the help of a Republican National Committee official in trying to get Trump to sit for an interview. While interviewing RNC communications director Sean Spicer during Fusion’s July 19 convention coverage Ramos asked Spicer, “Do you think Donald Trump would give me an interview?” adding that “everyone is talking to us, but he doesn’t want to talk to us.” Spicer said he would “try” to get Trump to agree. Trump recently responded to Ramos’ interview requests by sending the anchor a “personal” letter containing a bumper sticker and a donation request.