New York (AP) — CNN has broken a relationship with former Republican Senator and current TV analyst Rick Santorum over derogatory comments on Native American culture.
At CNN, Santram was a senior political critic who was often tasked with giving a Republican perspective during the campaign coverage. His farewell path to the network was confirmed on Saturday by HLN Communications and Alison Radnick, vice president of CNN Diversity and Inclusion.
He caused controversy in his April 23 speech in front of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization. Santram said immigrants created a country from a blank slate based on Judeo-Christian ethics.
“We created a country out of nothing,” he said. “Yes, there were Native Americans, but there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
Comments urged Fawn Sharp, President of the National Congress of American Indians, to call him “Undisturbed and embarrassing racist who is ashamed of CNN and other media companies that provide him with the platform.”
“To revise the record, European colonists in the Americas found thousands of complex and sophisticated sovereignty with thousands of different cultural, spiritual and technological developments. It was a tribal nation, “she wrote in a statement.
Sharp has called on CNN to fire Santram or face boycotts from more than 500 tribal nations and their allies around the world.
Santram later said on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show that he was “misunderstood” in the sense that it was not clear what he was talking about in the context of the creation of the US government.
“People say I’m trying to dismiss what happened to Native Americans,” he said. “It’s far from that. The way we dealt with Native Americans was horrifying. It goes against all the bones and everything I’ve fought as Congressional leaders.”
Santrum’s comments have previously garnered a counterattack, especially in his view of gay marriage and homosexuality. In 2003, he infuriated homosexual advocates by appearing to compare homosexuality with childhood and bestiality.