'You Gotta Be Right Down the Middle': NBC Anchor Tom Llamas Is Not Picking Sides
Latino USA
My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journalist Tom Llamas made history this year when he became the first Latino to anchor a major weekday evening news show in English. Every weekday, around six million viewers across the country tune in to NBC Nightly News to watch Tom give the latest national and international news.
He’s been in broadcast journalism for more than 25 years. He joined Maria Hinojosa to talk about how his upbringing in Miami as the son of Cuban refugees shaped the journalist he is today, why he believes in being “down the middle,” and how he envisions his new role at NBC covering the second Trump administration.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. |
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| 0:38.1 | Dear Latino USA listener, before we start, you should know that if you want to listen to this |
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| 0:58.1 | in the episode description and after you do that, would be the new anchor of the nightly news. |
| 1:24.6 | Tom became the first Latino ever to anchor a major weekday evening news show in English. |
| 1:32.5 | So, of course, I had to sit down with him before the year ended. |
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