classic hershey's bar which just chocolate or a heath bar which is toffee in the middle and then chocolate. my favoritee is a payday bar.ay i don't even know what that is. it's basically like peanuts and goo. i don't know. but a picnic bar, on the other hand, is not one of those minimalist ones. it is a maximalist candy bar.ma it's like if you combined all the things in a snickers bar ane a milky way and a crackle bar, it's gotba like carmel and peans and puffed rice and a nougat and a cookie and a whole bunch of a other stuff in there. picnic bars are like a jambalaya of candy bars. and they're delicious. they're not a big thing in the united states, for whatever reason, although i think you can get them here. i know they are very popular in lots of other parts of the world. here, for example, are picnic bars on a supermarket shelf in russia. and you can see from the little price tag looking thing there that they'reth listed for 14 ruble s each, which is almost nothing. 14 rubles is like 16 in u.s. dollars. picnic bars that cheap in russia? no, actually, they're not. this was not a blow-out 16-cent sale on delicious candy bars. you see the description written there in russian. if you translate that into ns english, it says, this quote, russian soldiers did not let 14 trucks of humanitarian cargo into the kherson region of ukraine. peaceful civilians there need food and cmedicine. so the price there says 14 rubles, which isn't the real n' price. and then that description of something going on in the war lists 14 trucks.li that turns out to be the theme. because here t is another one. a price tag under tubs of instant coffee, 400 rubles. it's not really 400 rubles, and the description there doesn't say instant coffee. it says "the russian army has bombed anha art school in mayor mariupol. around 400 people were hiding in it from shooting. quote, weekly inflation reached a maximum since 1998 due to military actions in ukraine. stop the war." these false price tags went up on storegs shelves in supermarks across russia early last year. it was shortly after russia invaded ukraine in february of last year.er r and you see the theme about how this works. every number that's listed on the price tag that looks like a price was tied to some kind of data point about the war. so you'd see the candy bar price, for example, that doesn't seem like the right price. what does that actually say? and then you read the y description, and it would make you n,think. artists/activists made a little packde of these false price labs that people could printout and take to their local supermarkets and putlo up on the shelves, ju asel a very small protest, a sml form of dissent. a quiet, thought-provoking nonviolent, nondamaging form of speech to try to get people to think, to make a small gesture of protest against what russia was doing in starting that war in ukraine. 20 rubles. the russian army has destroyed over 20 medical establishments in ukraine. 4300 rubles. stop the war in the first 43 rs days. 4300 russian soldiers have died. why is this note being talked about t on tv? 8 rubles. i haven't been in touch with my sister from ukraine forh eight days. i don't know what has happened to her. stop the war.e gh at the start of the russian invasion of ukraine, russia's president vladimir putin made it a criminal offense for anyone in russia to say anything negative about what russia was doing in thatsi war. when the anti-war price tags started popping up in russian stores, security officials started hunting down the people who had put those price tags up on the shelves. and onehe of those people was ts young woman. her name is alexandra skochalenko. she goes by sasha. she is an artist. she is a pacifist. last year sasha printed out five of the protest tags, five of t them, and she put them up on a shelf at her local supermarket.l and using security camera footage, the police identified her. they tracked her down at a friend's house, and then they arrested her. they put her behind bars under putin's new law that bans so-called fake news about russian troops. you might remember us covering this back in u april of last ye when it first happened. the story sounds familiar, it's because we covered it back thenk a year and a half ago. since then, sasha has been in prison, awaiting trial. she has been in prison this whole year and a half. so she was arrested last spring. pbs actually made an incredible documentary that followed up more on the story since.or it wasn't all about her, but a littleut slice of that documenty covered her story. it's a documentary called "putin's war at home." again, it's pbs. the whole thing is online.th you can watch it online forefree. i o highly recommend it. they joust won an emmy for it.or for one little subplot in this s documentary, they followed sasha's story. they spokell with her partner sonia. they were able the go to one of the hearings in sasha's indicate where the court decided to keep her in prison for the world threatening dangerous crime of posting those five little price tags in a russian market.ng >> they wait five hours to hear the judge's decision. >> i just want them to let her t go. she says i just want them to let her go. well, now we know the resolution of this case. alexandra, sasha the artist has just been sentenced to seven years in a russian penal colony. seven years in a russian penal colony for the grave crime of placing five little anti-war price tags in a russian supermarket. dozens of her friends and supporters were in the courtroos when she was sentenced. they chanted her name when the sentence came down. they shouted "shame, shame, shame." sasha then addressed the court. she said despite being behind te bars, i am freer than you, addressing the judge, she said "i'm not, afraid to be differe from others. perhaps that is why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and keeps me caged like a dangerous animal." she said "the prosecutor repeatedly declaredth my action extremely dangerous to society and the state. how fragile must the prosecutor's belief in ouril str and society be if he thinks that our statehood and public safety caneh be brought down by five small pieces of paper." they did not have to conjure up some kind of like phantom property damage here, right. for putting up these little anti-war pieces of paper, these little anti-war price tags. this was not a damaging crime. this was not a violent crime. she isot not even part of any group. she has no criminal record.mi she has no record of even being a political activist of any kind. this was just her making a personal statement of opinion. and now she's sentenced to seve' years in a penal colony for having done so. because this is what they do. in 2021, the nobel peace prize was gwynn to two journalists. one of them is this man, the editor-in-chiefma of a newspape called novaya gazeta, probably the most, independent paper in russia that was independent of putin. at least six journalists from novaya have been murdered, including their star reporter who was murdered in her apartment building in 2006 on vladimir putin's birthday. novaya gazeta's editor was one of two people awarded the nobel peace prize in 2021, shortly thereafter under threat of having the staff of the whole newspaper arrested, novaya gazeta was forced to stop its print operation and move its operations out ofat the country. just a few weeks ago, the nobel peace prize laureate was officially declared a foreign agent in russia. he is not foreign. he is russian. but declaring him a foreign agentar makes it essentially a crime for anybody in russia to n work with him in any way, and it likely means they'll be trying to jail him as well. i mention that he was one of two people that got the nobel peace prizepe in 2021. the other person, the person he shared it with is this person, maria isrussa. she was raised in new jersey. she went to princeton. she is brilliant. she was bureau chief for cnn for a long time. maria ended up founding a independent critical newspaper in theap philippines. and when the philippines got rod riht duty duterte, she won that nobel peace prize in 2021 along with the editor from novaya gazeta in russia. and soon after she won the nobel peace prize, the philippine governmentpr ordered rappler, h paper shut down entirely. they're still fighting to keep it going.th she isti still fighting to stay out of jail. but that is true both for her in the philippines and her fellow nobel laureate in russia, both of them facing the same kind of threats. not because either of them has done anything other than commit journalism. but that's how authoritarian governments treat journalists. that's hoy authoritarian governments treat the threat of the free press. literally even being awarded the nobel peace prize cannot protect you. yesterday, argentina elected a new president, and it's the chainsaw guy, the guy whose followers wear "make argentina great again" baseball hats. he got a big congratulations from republican party leader donald trump when he won this election in argentina yesterday. he says that as argentina's new president, he is going to eliminate that country's currency and abolish its central bank. he says of the 18 departments in the federal government, he is going to eliminate 10 of the 18, including health and education. he has said he wants a free totally unregulated market in guns in argentina, and also, a free andnd totally unregulated market in human organs. that said, he also wants a totas ban on abortion. so, you know, freedom. but with a to-do list like that, what are his priorities? what comes first? well, what did he talk about first after getting elected? he was elected last night. this was his victory speech last night. you can see his signature calm,n cool, collected vibe on full display. this was last night, the night he t won. and then today, first thing he told reporters that he is going to move to dismantle the media outlets in argentina that gave himti critical coverage during e presidential campaign. this is what they do. this is what they do. this is what they do everywhere. as soon as jair bolsonaro got elected in brazoria, brazoria's next president declares war on fake news media. that was 2018 when he was first elected. by 2020 he was publicly making a show of threatening to punch a reporter in the reface. by er2023, when he was voted ou of his office and his supporters tried their own january 6th style storming of the capitol, his supporters were just physically attacking the press. that was brazil. in poland, it was the law and justice party there. and the headlines looked remarkably familiar. "poland targets tv channel, limits press freedom." "poland's ruling part rams through media law." "how poland's government set out to conquer a free press." in hungary, it's the authoritarian viktor orban, who is a favorite of american conservatives and conservative media figures. headlines look like this. "inside orban's crackdown on hungary's free press." reporters without boarders list viktor orban as press freedom predator. this is how they do it. they do it everywhere. it speaks different languages. it has different accents, but it's all the same. and his 2016 campaign and in his one term in office here, former republican president donald trump of course made a whole sport out of it, right, denouncing the american free press as the enemy of the people and all that now that he is running for president again, hen though, he is getting more specific, saying he is going to have msnbc investigated for treason. okay. treason. this weekend, trump adviser stephen miller suggested that criminal charges should be brought against the media watchdog group media matters after media matters pointed out that ontt twitter, the social media platform now owned by pro-trump right ring billionaire elon musk, major mainstream companies were having their ads appear alongside overt pro nazi, pro hitler material of the kind that floods that social media platform now that mr. musk has taken it over, and now that he himself has started promoting some of the worst antisemitic contents on the site. stephen miller says people should face criminal charges for pointing that outin about what' happening on twitter. you know, it's one thing for a presidential candidate's adviser to point at something like that andt say hey, your critics in e media should be in jail for criticizing you.s but it's quite another when the republican attorney general of the state of missouri then jumps in and volunteers that his office inol missouri is now looking into the matter, presumably to see if he can use the powers of his office as state attorney general to help with the jailing your enemies part of it. now tonight the republican attorney general of texas says he in fact hasf opened an official investigation of media matters, the media watchdog group that is pointing out what advertisers on twitter are having their ads show up alongside on that now totally unmoderated -- mostly unmoderated media. and why does the attorney general of texas need to investigate media matters for having criticized a right-wing billionaire? because, you know, make argentina great again or something. put the pacifist in jail for seven years in a russian penal colony for the price tags protest. arrest the editors. drive their publications out of the country. this is what they do. this news comes tonight at a time when literal neo-nazis, dudes with big swastika flags were marching in wisconsin thism weekend, rallying outside a historic jewish site in downtown madison, wisconsin. that was saturday this weekend. then the very next day, sunday morning, a grenade was found strapped to a pole g outside a synagogue in lakewood, new jersey. today federal charges were filed against a utah man who allegedly made multiple death threats to an organization in d.c. advocating for palestinian rights. this comes at a time when the israel-hamas war feels like an unceasing bloodbath at this point, with hamas still holding israelis hostage for a month and a half now, with the death toll inside gaza now estimated at over 13,000 people killed, with 1.5 million displaced in gaza from their homes, with nowhere to go, slim to no hope that there will be anywhere for them to return to at all at any time. the moral calamity and the ongoing catastrophe in that war has caused such suffering and deathff there and such grief an outrage around the world. here in the united states it has correlated with not just grief and outrage, but with a major spike in hate crimes of americans against over americans. which makes it an auspicious time for the richest man in the world to use his media outlet to tell the world effectively that white people have an enny the jews. for republican political figures to say they might like to lock up anyone in the media who criticizes him for that. for the leader of the republican party to be promising investigations for his critics in the media, and also that he is going to use the u.s. army against americanus civilians wh protest against him. and also, he is going to build camps in america in which he is going to lock up millions of il people, because he wants power again so he can crush his enemies and root out what he calls the vermin w in this country, the people who oppose him, the internal threat. it is of course never a good time for any of this. but the fact thatny this is all happening at once right now, it's like the difference between one warning light going off on your dashboard while you're driving and all the warning lights going off all at once while you're driving, right. when the latter happens, you pull over, because obviously this is serious. tonight we're going to be talking about a brand-new ruling from a panel of conservative federal appeals court judges, ruling that effectively would end the voting rights act, the , landmark civil rights legislation that was the high watermark for theas legislative achievements of the civil rights movement in 1965. this is the legislation that banned racial discrimination in voting. this ruling tonight from the 8th circuit court of appeals would effectively end the voting rights act in a significant swath of the country. we're going to be talking about that. that was a surprise ruling today from the eighth circuit. we're also going to be talking about tonight under the radar, but potentially hugely important story about another right wing media takeover in our country. we've got details on that with somebody who absolutely has a totally unique and well informed perspective on that.a we've also got some bright spot news tonight about people fighting hard for their rights and for good treatment, and not only winning, but their victory forbu themselves has had the knock-on effect of helping all sorts of other people of not helping in their fight but were in a b predicament they were in. it's good news about people who werene fighting hard and having ripple effect good newsav for people who didn't even joinpp i that fight, butho who can reall benefit from o it. that is a rare type of good news story in our culture and in our economy, but we've got that tonight. and that story also brings with it some really good news about some of our own colleagues here at msnbc, including some of our beloved colleagues here on this show. so we do have good news ahead tonight. we've got some really not good news too. but hey, you don't get a choice. it turns 80 it all comes together. we're going handle all of it. stay with us tonight. lots to get to.le ♪ ♪ i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. i'm under 7. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults also with known heart disease. i'm lowering my risk. adults lost up 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(smelling) ew. gotta get rid of this. ♪tell me why♪ because it stinks. ♪have you tried downy rinse and refresh♪ it helps remove odors 3x better than detergent alone. it worked guys! ♪yeahhhh♪ downy rinse and refresh. in order for small businesses to thrive, they need to be smart, efficient, savvy. making the most of every opportunity. that's why comcast business is introducing the small business bonus. for a limited time you can get up to a $1000 prepaid card with qualifying internet. yep, $1000. so switch to business internet from the company with the largest fastest reliable network and that powers more businesses than anyone else. learn how you can get $1000 back for your business today. comcast business. powering possibilities. first it was alabama. surprise supreme court win for black voters. soon it was also georgia, and then it was louisiana too. all states where major court decisions called for the drawing of new congressional maps that would give black voters a chance at fair representation a republican legislators drew up districts that effectively locked black voters out of any chance of electing the legislators of their choice. these are all states where voters and voting rights groups were able to sue to get fair representation for black voters, and they were able to win. they one surprisingly meaningful consequential victories for black voters thanks to the voting rights act of 1965. the cases appear to open a path toward undoing racially discriminatory congressional maps of the past. state by state, one by one. until now, until today. today a panel of three federal judges all appointed by republicans issued a decision in a case that was brought by the arkansas chapter of the naacp. it challenges the fairness of congressional maps there. and these judges in the 8th circuit court of appeals, they ruled that private citizens, private entities, private groups can't bring these cases anymore, can't bring the kind of cases that we have seen succeed in alabama and georgia and louisiana and other states. the judges ruled that entities, private entities can't bring those kinds of cases. actually, the only entity that can bring that kind of a case is the united states attorney general. and if you can't get the united states attorney general to bring a case like this on your behalf, then what happens in your state? and what happens to the cases that have been decided already? what happens to other states where voters want to challenge a racially discriminatory gerrymander of the congressional maps? how long before this case gets to the united states supreme court? and what's going to happen when it gets there? joining us now is janay nelson. she is president of the naacp legal defense fund. oh, i'm sorry, i'm introducing her now. she is going to be with us right after the break. we'll be right back. stay with us. he hits his mark —center stage—and is crushed by a baby grand piano. you're replacing me? customize and save with liberty bibberty. he doesn't even have a mustache. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ the promise of america is freedom, equality, but right now, those pillars of our democracy are fragile and our rights are under attack. reproductive rights, voting rights, the right to make your own choices and to have your voice heard. we must act now to restore and protect these freedoms for us and for the future, and we can't do it without you. we are the american civil liberties union. will you join us? call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. your gift of just $19 a month, only $0.63 a day, will help ensure that together we can continue to fight for free speech, liberty and justice. your support is more urgently needed than ever. reproductive rights are on the line and we are looking at going backwards. we have got to be here. we've got to be strong to protect those rights. so please join the aclu now. call or go to my aclu.org and become an aclu guardian of liberty for just $19 a month. when you use your credit card, you'll receive this special we the people t-shirt member card magazine and more to show you're part of a movement to protect the rights of all people. for over 100 years, the aclu has fought for everyone to have a voice and equal justice. and we will never stop because we the people, means all of us. so please call or go online to my aclu.org to become a guardian of liberty today. the headline in "the new york times" tonight is "federal court moves to drastically weaken voting rights act." passed in 1965, the voting rights act was one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, undoing decades of jim crow laws and protecting against egregious racial gerrymanders. but the law has been under legal assault almost since its inception. today a federal appeals court moved to drastically weaken it. should today's ruling stand, it would move perhaps the most important facet of the voting rights act, the majority of challenges to discriminatory laws have come from private citizens and civil rights groups. joining us now is jenae nelson. she is president of the naacp legal defense fund. ms. nelson, thanks very much for joining us, especially on short notice with the surprise ruling tonight. >> happy to be here, rachel. >> so let me just ask you, i feel like for the last ten years, since the supreme court ruling in 2013 that really took a lot of the power out of the voting rights act away, we have been talking about this landmark piece of legislation, this sort of moral crucible piece of american legislation as having been severely weakened. what is important about tonight's ruling? as compared to the other attacks on the voting rights act that we've seen from this conservative court? >> well, tonight's ruling upends almost 60 years of precedent in which, as you noted, individuals and civil rights groups have enforced section 2 of the voting rights act to make sure that our country has a democracy that is free from racial discrimination. it's something we've never really achieved, but the voting acts right in section 2 has done such muscular work to advance us toward this goal. and this is the first decision to say unequivocally that individuals and civil rights groups like the legal defense fund cannot bring lawsuits under this key provision. and it's interesting that you bring up shelby county versus holder, which as you noted ten years ago gutted what was the most transformative provision of the voting rights act, section 5. and in that decision, chief justice roberts in striking down that key part of the voting rights act pointed to section 2 and said "you can still use section 2 to vindicate your rights. there is still a vehicle to address racial discrimination in our elections." and yet a panel of the 8th circuit court of appeals in this country said no, individuals, individual voters, citizen, civil rights groups, good government groups who have brought litigation under section 2 for decades now can no longer do that. and the only possible vehicle is through the department of justice and the u.s. attorney general. that is woefully inadequate for so many reasons, not only does doj have limited resources and limited time and limited bandwidths, as we know, not every department of justice is the same. and in the last administration, we saw voting rights suits come to a screeching halt. in fact, the legal defense fund had to step in and effectively be a department of justice during that period of that administration. we can't allow our voting rights to depend on the political whims or machinations of a particular administration. individual citizens deserve the right to vindicate the right to vote, which is so fundamental to our democracy. >> thinking about the movements on the right, both in and outside of a legal system that have sort of brought us to this place today, it's hard not to i think ascribe the worst motives to this assault on the voting rights act. i mean, the voting rights act is designed to remove racial discrimination from the voting system. if you're trying to get rid of the voting rights act, you're trying to get rid of protections against racial discrimination and voting. and it's very hard to get away from that simple fundamental truth of it. but when it comes to this particular part of the way the voting rights act works, section 2, which as you say allows groups like the legal defense fund, allows individual groups to bring these cases to test whether or not voting provisions are racially discriminatory. is there some beef that the right has with that in particular? is there some case that they feel like is particularly wrong or there is something that they think has been egregiously mishandled in the way section 2 has been operative in states across the country for all the decades that this has been in place? >> you know, it's fascinating, rachel, we've brought suits against democrats and republicans. we are a nonpartisan organization. we enforce section 2 and all other provisions of the voting rights act on behalf of voters to ensure that no matter who the actor, no matter what party they might be affiliated with, that they don't trample on that fundamental right. so really, there is no reason to cast this in partisan terms. there is no reason for any party to feel that the voting rights act is not a fair exercise of congressional authority to ensure that the 14th and 15th amendments of our constitution are honored when we talk about this critical right that undergirds our entire democracy. but of course, if you are prone to manipulating rules, manipulating districting lines, manipulating elections in every possible way to win against a majority of the people in this country, then, yes, you might have a beef with the voting rights act. but that is no way to run a democracy. that is no way to ensure that all voices are equally heard. >> janai nelson, president of the naacp legal defense sunday as we're discussing this removal from the 8 cereals. presumably it may be heard en banc. it will certainly finds way to the united states supreme court. janai, we'd love to talk to you again as this continues to move. thanks for being with us this evening. >> thank you, rachel. all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. with us ally love? 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(pensive music) (footsteps crunching) (pensive music) (birds tweeting) (pensive music) (broom sweeping) - [narrator] one in five children worldwide are faced with the reality of living without food. no family dinners, no special treats, no full bellies. all around the world, parents are struggling to feed their children. toddlers are suffering from acute malnutrition, which stunts their growth. kids are forced to drop out of school so they can help support their families. covid, conflict, inflation and climate have ignited the worst famine in our lifetime. and we're fed up. fed up with the fact that hunger robs children of their childhood. fed up with the lack of progress. fed up with the injustice. help us brighten the lives of children all over the world by visiting getfedupnow.org. for as little as $10 a month, you can join save the children as we support children and families in desperate need of our help. now is the time to get fed up and give back. when you join the cause, your $10 monthly donation can help communities in need of life-saving treatments and nutrients, prevent children from dropping out of school. support our work with communities and governments to help children go from short-term surviving to long-term thriving. and now thanks to special government grants, every dollar you give before december 31st can multiply up to 10 times the impact. that means more food, water, medicine and help for kids around the world. you'll also receive a free tote bag to share your support for children in need. childhood without food is unimaginable. get fed up. call us now or visit getfedupnow.org today. i would say that we're closer than the average mother daughter. hi mom! if i lost my mom.... i can't think about that for too long. i was like, "whoa, mom, i have this gene!" kenzie's test and me being able to find out that i was brca positive was lifesaving. the holidays wouldn't be worth celebrating without my family. so this is a very unique award. it's called the mexican order of the aztec eagle. it's the highest honor the mexican government can give to any non-mexican citizen. they gave it -- they award it for services to mexico torman kind. since it's creation in 1933, recipients of the order of the aztec eagle have included queen elizabeth ii, nelson mandela, walt disney, bill and melinda gates, gabriel garcia marquez, to name a few. in 2018, added to that illustrious list is jared, yes, that jared, jared kushner, son-in-law of then president donald trump. mexico's president presenting jared here with the order of the aztec eagle. again, the highest honor the mexican government can bestow upon any foreigner. why did jared get that? as you might imagine, the award set off some criticism in mexico where donald trump was not the most popular guy to ever serve as u.s. president. but jared apparently had friends in mexico. in particular, the president of a very, very powerful tv network there called televisa. and that mexican tv network president reportedly helped facilitate this very big, very prestigious fans government award for jared. a few months later, that same tv executive then hosted jared and the new mexican president for dinner at his home. it's good to have friends in high places. last year, that same mexican tv network televisa merged with the american spanish broadcaster univision. televisa and univision, they are now one big company. and that apparently is how jared kushner helped to arrange a big hour-long super interview for his father-in-law earlier this month on univision. both jared and his friend, the tv executive from mexico were reportedly in the room at trump's mar-a-lago resort while the interview was being taped. the interview was conducted not by a univision reporter based in the u.s., but by a televisa reporter, who was flown in from mexico especially for the interview. the interview was 100% softball questions, no pushback whatsoever from the interviewer. and whatever you think about that as a style of interview, it was a noticeable departure for univision, which has generally been quite critical of donald trump. at least it was before. now the network seems to be doing something quite different now. for example, during the interview, the network also at last minute canceled a bunch of biden campaign ads that had been scheduled to run during the broadcast of that trump interview. it was "the washington post" that first reported last week that this strange softball trump interview might have been prompted by new jared kushnery executives now running univision. since then, though, the story has snowballed. one top anchor at univision suddenly quit the network a few days after the interview aired, though he did not specify why. more than 70 groups, some of the biggest latino advocacy organizations in the country have delivered a letter to univision describing the trump interview as a betrayal of trust. prominent actor and comedian john leguizamo has called on activists and politicians to boycott univision. the congressional hispanic caucus has reportedly drafted a letter asking univision's ceo to please meet with members of congress to talk, among other things disinformation targeting the latino community. but it's not just the trump interview that's causing such agita. if a big right word pro-trump shift has been organized at america's largest spanish language broadcaster, that could have huge implications for the 2024 election. i mean, univision is the 70 biggest network audience in all of tv. it is the most watched spanish language network in the united states. the day before the trump interview aired, univision's miami affiliate reportedly preempted its normal programing for a three-hour special leading up to a trump rally in florida. it was just a regular trump rally. there is trump rallies all the time. but they gave it a three-hour special, including breathless live coverage. they treated it like it was the moon landing. we spoke to three former univision executives today who say they are hearing concerns from current employees that the instruction to blow out regular local programing for breathless hours' long live trump rally coverage is a decision that likely came from the top. it was likely directed by network executives. we also heard from five sources today, two of them current univision employees that editorial control at local univision stations has recently been brought under the direction of the overall network, which means local stations no longer have ultimate control over their coverage decisions. now there is nothing inherently wrong with that. different networks operate in different ways when it comes to their affiliates. but this is a change. and if univision executives like jared's guy decide to use that change to push on seekiously including affiliates in swing states, aleksandra skochilenko that would be a five-alarm fire for the biden campaign for obvious reasons, but it also would be one for spanish language journalism in this country. joining us now, i'm honored toe say is joaquin, he spent 22 years at univision, including as its president from 1998 to 1992. he tells the "washington post" he is worried the network has moved away from the founding vision. he called the trump interview that recently aired on univision, quote, a blatant embarrassment. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, rachel. my pleasure. >> let me just first ask if anything i said seemed wrong to you, or if you think i'm misunderstanding anything important about this story. >> no, i think you're right on point. >> what do you make of the crescendo and blowback univision is getting especially from parts of the latino community in the united states in the wake of these apparent changes? >> well, it is a drastic change for what have been the standards of univision. when i created the univision network news, aleksandra skochilenko they were built on the principles of american broadcasting journalism. the abcs, the cbs, the nbcs of the time. so we were trying to basically create a spanish but american network. and i say that because there is a big difference from our association in those days with the news that were coming from mexico. univision has kept that standard for 40 years. it's recognized in the hispanic community as the excellence in journalism. and this basically deviates in a very drastic way from what has been that. and from a network that it means an awful lot for hispanics in this country. >> when you talk to "the washington post" about this, you said something also along these lines. you said that when you saw the trump interview, you saw that as the kind of thing you might expect from mexican tv news, from what televisa is known, for example, is doing in mexico as opposed to that type of standard that you're describing for univision, for the idea behind the creation of univision's news department. can you elaborate on that a little bit in terms of the different types of standards that you see and why you thought the trump interview was more like that prior standard, or the standard you would see in mexico today rather than in the united states. >> well, i think, first of all, to call the trump an interview, it's mistaken. it was not an interview as we understand in the united states. that was basically a one-hour propaganda open space for former president trump to say whatever he wanted to say. more dangerous than that even, rachel, you referred to it in your introduction, had to do with the coverage of the local station for three hours and the banners that running on the air. there are many, many banners, but one of them referred to how trump's statement that we have become the septic tank for immigration. he is obviously referring about hispanic immigration. he is not talking about norwegians or swedish coming to america. and this was being run on air in regular programing on the miami univision station. a real insult to hispanic community of this country. >> we also have heard from multiple sources that the network has taken editorial control from local affiliates at univision. so that may not have been the miami affiliate's choice to run those banners. the other banners that they ran included things like "biden is public enemy number one." they ran that as a banner. >> yes. >> if the network has taken over full editorial control from the local affiliates, is that a change from previous practice? >> it is. it is. and for those who understand the business, there is no doubt that doing what they did had to be a corporate decision. that is not a decision that the local news director or the local general manager would have taken on its own. >> former univision president joaquin blaya. mr. blaya, i really appreciate you taking time to be here tonight. this is a fascinating and really, really important story. we hope you'll come back to talk to us as we stay on it. thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. we'll be right back. be right ba. 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