Former reality television star and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has lost another business partner.
Trump’s defamatory comments calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers and “rapists” has already cost him relationships with Univision, NBCUniversal (the parent company of msnbc), and Macy’s. Now, the 5 Rabbit Cerveceria Brewery in Chicago has decided to cut its ties.
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The brewery in Bedford Park had been supplying Trump Tower’s Rebar with a house beer for the past few months. But after the mogul characterized the vast majority of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug dealers, the 5 Rabbit’s Latin American owners decided to take their ales elsewhere.
“We would be doing an injustice to the community we serve (and live in) by engaging in business with someone who does not accept our role in society and expresses a rhetoric of hate and ignorance towards us,” the brewery’s co-owner, Andreas Araya, told WBEZ.
The brewery has some 50 kegs worth of beer leftover from its collaboration with Rebar and they’ve decided to rename it as a tribute to their former business partner, according to the Chicago Sun-Times: “Chinga Tu Pelo” or “F*ck your hair” is a golden summer ale.
Trump did recieve some good news Thursday morning: The cable channel Reelz has announced that it will be broadcasting the Trump-owned Miss USA pageant, after NBC and Univision dropped the program last month.
“As one of only a few independent networks, we decided to exercise our own voice and committed ourselves to bringing this pageant to American viewers everywhere,” Reelz CEO Stan E. Hubbard said in a statement to msnbc. “For us, this decision is about the dreams of the contestants who come from all walks of life across the United States.”
The channel’s parent company, Hubbard Broadcasting, donated $100,000 to Karl Rove’s super PAC American Crossroads in 2012, according to the Center for Public Integrity, as first reported by Talking Points Memo.
But while the pageant was securing a network, it lost another host. On Wednesday night, former NFL running back Emmitt Smith joined singer-songwriter Roseyln Sanchez and msnbc’s Thomas Roberts in opting out of the gig.
That same night, Trump defended the comments that drove them away. Citing a Fusion article that found “80% of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped along the way,” Trump demanded that CNN’s Don Lemon tell him, if most Mexican immigrants aren’t rapists, “Who’s doing the raping?”
New polls from Quinnipiac and CNN/ORC put Donald Trump in second place among likely Republican primary voters both nationwide and in the critical first states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Eric Levitz