Telemundo, Presidential Debate Under Its Belt, Moves Into 2020 Spotlight

“I didn’t feel as though we were attacking him. We were just being clear on what the truth is, and how our community feels,” he said. “A lot of what he says, and how he says it, and what he does, is causing fear in the Latino community. He may not want to hear that, but it’s a fact.”

Univision executives said they, too, planned to aggressively cover the 2020 race — and suggested that their past confrontational coverage might have been a reason that Mr. Trump opted to sit down with a rival network.

“The more that we do our jobs in terms of questioning authority and holding people in authority accountable, sometimes the more difficult it is for us to have access,” Lourdes Torres, Univision’s head of political coverage and special projects, said in an interview. “It makes it more difficult to get an interview with the president, makes it more difficult to get access to some of those rallies. But we don’t stop trying to get those answers.”

As for Telemundo’s encroachment onto political turf, Ms. Torres took a measured view. “Latino viewers are the ones who can take full advantage of us having good competition,” she said. “If there are other people out there emulating and trying to do what we’ve been doing for years, that’s something that makes us proud.”

Univision will enter the campaign spotlight in September, when it and ABC News host the third Democratic primary debate. Fewer candidates than the field in Miami last month are expected to qualify, thanks to stricter requirements set by the Democratic National Committee.

“It’s a better opportunity to have a more meaningful conversation with the candidates,” Ms. Torres said.

Until then, Mr. Díaz-Balart, who interviewed Barack Obama several times during his presidency, said he planned to pursue a follow-up with Mr. Trump, who he said needed to do more to directly address Latinos. An interview every two years, he said, “is not acceptable.”

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