Roughly one month after saying “there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture” during a public speaking engagement, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has been dropped from his role as a CNN commentator.
Alison Rudnick, vice president of HLN Communications and CNN Diversity & Inclusion, told Axios in anemailed statementthat she “can confirm that we parted ways.”
He added in the statement that he remains “committed to continuing the fight for our conservative principles and values.”
Neither CNN nor Santorum’s organization, Patriot Voices, immediately responded to PEOPLE’s requests for comment on Monday.
“We came here and created a blank slate,“Santorum contended. “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
He continued: “It was born of the people who came here pursuing religious liberty to practice their faith, to live as they ought to live and have the freedom to do so.”
As the criticism began to swell,The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barrtweeted a statementfrom Santorum, in which the former lawmaker said: “I had no intention of minimizing or in any way devaluing Native American culture.”
CNN, for which Santorum had been a commentator since 2017, faced heat as well, with National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp issuing a sharply-wordedstatementdirected at both.
Calling Santorum “an unhinged and embarrassing racist who disgraces CNN and any other media company that provides him a platform,” Sharp argued that the network would be subject to a boycott if they did not fire him.
“Televising someone with his views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” the statement read. “Any mainstream media organization should fire him or face a boycott from more than 500 Tribal Nations and our allies from across the country and worldwide.”
Saying he “misspoke,” Santorum attempted to clarify the remarks, adding, “What I was talking about is the founding of the country.”
Santorum continued: “I gave a long talk about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and what I was saying is that we sort of created that anew if you will. I was not trying to dismiss Native Americans. In fact, I mentioned them because they were here and they did have an impact. In fact, in this country you are right, they have a huge impact.”
The Republican’s attempts to explain his remarks didn’t help, however, with an executive at CNN tellingHuffPost: “Leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him. So he was essentially benched anyway.”
source: people.com
