Donald Trump interrupted CNN‘s Gun Death Grief Porn Day 2 to punch back at Univision’s CEO, who last night called him “beneath contempt” for telling its star anchor to sit down and wait his turn at a news conference.
Chris Cuomo broke this morning from CNN’s flood-the-zone coverage of yesterday’s on-air shooting in Virginia to ask Trump why he “created these situations” by “going after” Jorge Ramos at his Tuesday presser.
“I didn’t go after Jorge Ramos,” Trump corrected, in the phone interview. “He stands up and starts screaming like a madman. He was very rude, very loud and obnoxious. I had picked a man from CBS — a top anchor at CBS — to give a question, and this guy stands up and starts screaming. [Ramos] wasn’t asking a question, he was giving the speech.
“I did the right thing,” Trump continued. “If I didn’t take control of it, you wouldn’t have even had a news conference. And I did take control, unlike Bernie Sanders, who lost his microphone with two women – they got up and just took his microphone away from him like he was a baby. I won’t let that happen.”
Randy Falco, CEO of Univision (and former AOL CEO and NBC COO) last night used the “beneath contempt” gag in a statement about the news-conference kerfuffle between Trump and Falco’s star.
By that, Falco meant Trump had interrupted Ramos, as Ramos interrupted Trump and the reporter trying to ask a question: “Excuse me, Sit down! Sit down! No you don’t, you haven’t been called – go back to Univision,” Trump said and, when Ramos persisted, had him escorted out by security.
Trump invited Ramos back in 10 minutes later, and Ramos got a rare four-minute news-conference exchange with the leading GOP candidate. Falco last night described that exchange as Mr. Trump having “demonstrated complete disregard for him and for the countless Hispanics whom Jorge seeks to represent through press questions that are at the heart of the First Amendment.”
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