Former Sen. Rick Santorum chalked up his firing from CNN as the latest example of “cancel culture.”
The 63-year-old former Pennsylvania senator defended himself and rebuked his old employer during a Monday night interview on Fox News.
CNN faced “a lot of pressure from outside” groups to end their relationship with Santorum after he made controversial comments about Native Americans, which he later tried to clarify, he said.
“In this case, it’s a little disappointing because as you mentioned what I said was not at all disparaging toward Native Americans, what I was talking about is the founding of the United States of America and that Native Americans did not have a role in the founding of our country,” Santorum said, later adding, “So one of the things that I am concerned about is that you get savaged by telling the truth, and I told the truth here.”
RICK SANTORUM: ‘THERE ISN’T MUCH NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE IN AMERICAN CULTURE’
He added that his firing shows “the Left is intolerant. They are worried, I’m sure, that their viewership which is obviously very left was going to pay a price. And the intolerance of the Left is the issue in the cancel culture that is flowing from it.”
On April 23, the former senator told the Young America’s Foundation that settlers fleeing religious persecution “birthed a nation from nothing,” dismissing the extent of Native Americans on the country’s culture.
“We came here and created a blank slate. 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 said in the speech. “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.”
He then went on CNN about a week later to address the backlash that ensued and acknowledged he “misspoke” in his remarks.
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“No, no, no, no, no. Just to be clear, what I was not saying was that Native American culture — I misspoke. What I was talking about is, as you can see from the run-up, I was talking about the founding of our country,” he said.
