Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) took to the House floor on Wednesday to blast “Saturday Night Live” for inviting GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump to host the show next month, amid controversy over his remarks about Mexicans.
Gutiérrez suggested that the producers of NBC’s “SNL” have a diversity problem when it comes to Hispanics.
{mosads}“To put Donald Trump on the air in American living rooms on the signature comedy show of the most important national networks after saying that Mexicans are rapists, drug dealers and criminals, that is a corporate blunder too big to be ignored,” Gutiérrez said, noting that NBC, Macy’s, chef José Andrés and Univision had all cut business ties with Trump earlier this year.
The Illinois Democrat, one of the most prominent Hispanics in Congress, wondered if “Saturday Night Live” would give Trump airtime if he had targeted other minority groups.
“If Donald Trump had said gays and lesbians were murderers and raping Americans, would he get to host the show? It is every bit as much a fiction and a lie,” Gutiérrez said.
“Donald Trump has said some pretty awful things about women individually and collectively. But what if he said most women were criminals? Would the writers be thinking up sketches for Trump if he had slandered an entire gender rather than an entire ethnic group?”
He then noted that the cast of “SNL,” under the direction of Canadian-American show creator Lorne Michaels, lacks any Hispanics.
“What if all of the Latino cast members all walked off the job at “Saturday Night Live”? Oh wait, you don’t have any Latino cast members,” Gutierrez said.
“I just want to say one last thing to producer Lorne Michaels: I wonder if he had said that Canadians were rapists, murders and drug dealers, would you be inviting him on [“SNL”]?” he added.
A day earlier, Gutiérrez sent NBCUniversal and Comcast a letter urging them to drop Trump from the Nov. 7 show.
Trump has dismissed the outcry from Hispanic advocacy groups as merely a way to grab headlines ahead of his anticipated appearance.
“I think they’ll only drive the ratings up higher,” Trump said.