Appearing on Fox & Friends Monday morning, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said that he was not worried about being fired from his upcoming hosting gig on Saturday Night Live despite calls for his ouster.
In a letter to NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke and SNL creator Lorne Michaels, the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts slammed the network’s decision to invite Trump to host as “nothing less than a ratings ploy” and demanding that it drop him from the show.
“Donald Trump has yet to apologize for his bigoted comments about Mexican immigrants. Allowing Trump to host SNL will legitimize and validate his anti-Latino comments. NHLA had praised NBCUniversal, when it severed its ties with Donald Trump. We are appalled that you would enable Trump’s hateful speech for nothing less than a ratings ploy and ask that you rescind the SNL invitation,” the letter reads in part.
Said Trump in response:
“I’m leading in the polls with the Hispanics. I mean, you look at Nevada, I’m leading in the polls with the Hispanics because I produce jobs, and they know it. I have thousands of Hispanics that work for me, my relationships to Hispanics is better than those groups. Those groups are looking to fundraise, I know all about those groups.”
Brian Kilmeade put it more pointedly to Trump, asking, “NBC already turned on you and dumped you once. Are you concerned they’re going to do it again?” To which Trump said,
“No, they didn’t dump me. They dumped the Miss Universe pageant. And by the way on The Apprentice, they were begging me to do it. And I couldn’t do it because I’m running for President…and by the way, they’d take me right now and get rid of Arnold Schwarzenegger if I wanted to do it.”
Watch, below:
