CNN has dropped previous Republican Sen. Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator, a community spokeswoman confirmed on Saturday.
“We’ve parted strategies,” Vice President of Communications Alison Rudnick claimed by electronic mail.
The break up was initially reported by the Huffington Post, which documented that senior administration at the news outlet was not happy with Santorum’s May perhaps 3 physical appearance on its “Cuomo Key Time” display, the place he attempted to explain April remarks about Native Individuals at a Young America’s Foundation occasion. Rudnick verified the Huffington Post report to NBC News.
Santorum told host Chris Cuomo he “misspoke” and that his remarks were being taken out of context.
“I was not trying to dismiss Indigenous People,” he said.
Santorum’s back again peddling wasn’t enough, a CNN executive advised the Huffington Article. Santorum did not quickly respond to a NBC Information ask for for remark.
The initial remarks on Indigenous Americans have been widely panned as ignorant, insensitive and racist. At the Youthful America’s Basis function, Santorum argued there was “absolutely nothing listed here” just before European settlers arrived.
“We came listed here and established a blank slate,” Santorum said. “We birthed a country from absolutely nothing. I indicate, there was very little here. I signify, indeed we have Native Individuals, but candidly there is not considerably Indigenous American tradition in American culture.”
The remarks prompted some Indigenous Individuals and progressives to call on CNN to fall Santorum.
“Televising someone with his sights on Native American genocide is basically no various than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” Fawn Sharp, president of the Countrywide Congress of American Indians, explained in a statement.
“Any mainstream media business ought to hearth him or deal with a boycott from far more than 500 Tribal Nations and our allies from across the state and all over the world,” she said.