*Don Lemon had a viral moment on CNN Monday night during an exchange with Chris Cuomo about their conservative co-worker Rick Santorum, who made headlines last week for suggesting that Native Americans were not culturally relevant in the founding of America.
“We came here and created a blank slate,” Santorum, 62, told the conservative Young America’s Foundation. “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.”
“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 continued.
Watch below:
CNN’s Rick Santorum: “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” pic.twitter.com/EMxOEYDbg7
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) April 26, 2021
Cuomo had Santorum on his show Monday to explain himself. After playing the clip of his ridiculous comments, Cuomo said: “This seemed like you were trying to erase diversity in the interest of some White Christian right.”
Santorum, a conservative pundit for CNN, interjected, “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. I had given a long talk about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the ideas behind those, and that I was saying we sort of created that anew, if you will. And I was not trying to dismiss Native Americans. In fact, I mentioned them because, yes, they were here and did have an impact. You’re right. They have a huge impact, particularly in the west and many other areas of the country, where they have a huge impact on American culture. I was talking about — and I misspoke in this respect — I was talking about the founding and the principles embodied in the founding. I would never — and people said I’m trying to dismiss what we did to the Native Americans, far from it. The way we treated Native Americans was horrific.”
Cuomo pushed back against Santorum’s moonwalk, saying he and Republicans have a history of “beating up the little guy.”
“You have done this with homosexuality – comparing it to bestiality – same-sex marriage, minorities,” said Cuomo, as Santorum shook his head and let out an audible sigh. “And it seems like this is party of your party now, that ‘there’s something wrong with these Black people, that’s why bad trouble happens. There’s something wrong with these gay people. There’s something wrong with these people who want reproductive rights. They’re not us. They’re not us. We started this country.’”
“All I can say,” said Santorum, “is if you listened to what I said before your question, the beautiful thing about the imperfect people that put together our founding documents, they put together a pretty perfect saying, all men are created equal and endowed by a creator with rights. As I said before we get into trouble in this country, and I agree there are people who look at people as other, look at people as less than.”
This brings us to Don Lemon, who went off for nearly two minutes on his frustration over Santorum’s comments and attempted backtrack, but was also thisclose to calling for his removal from CNN … it appeared.
Cuomo told Lemon, “We agree on the problem. What’s the solution? We’ve got to figure it out.”
Lemon replied: “Oh, I’ve got a solution, but anyways, not my decision.”
Watch below:
>> @DonLemon‘s reaction to Rick Santorum’s comments: “I apologize to the viewers who were insulted by this. I was sitting in my office, furious, because he’s done it so many times. So many times…” pic.twitter.com/UD00zTalI7
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 4, 2021
Lemon wasn’t the only one ready to see Santorum punished with sudden unemployment. In a statement released Monday, National Congress of American Indians President Fawn Sharp called Santorum “an unhinged and embarrassing racist who disgraces CNN and any other media company that provides him a platform.”
“Televising someone with his views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” Sharp said. “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.”
Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Santorum’s remarks “hot garbage,” tagging CNN in his tweet.
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