Rick Santorum refuses to apologize, loses CNN job
Opinion by Erik Wemple Media critic
May 24, 2021 at 8:34 p.m. GMT+1
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Rick Santorum would rather not apologize for racist remarks than keep his job as a commentator with CNN.
On Saturday, HuffPost reported that the network had dropped Santorum, who had been a paid analyst since 2017. Network spokesman Matt Dornic confirmed that CNN had “parted ways” with Santorum, formerly a two-term senator from Pennsylvania. The move followed comments by Santorum on April 23 at the Standing Up For Faith & Freedom Conference of the Young America’s Foundation. “We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,” he told attendees. “I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.” Those words prompted well-reasoned complaints — including from Native American groups — that Santorum’s message was racist. But, perhaps because those comments were uttered off CNN’s air, the network didn’t issue a statement at the time.
A full-on apology and confession of ignorance from Santorum may have stanched the outcries. Instead, Santorum issued a statement focusing on his state of mind: “I had no intention of minimizing or in any way devaluing Native American culture.” That’s what they call in the business a failure to apologize — an offense that Santorum repeated during an early May appearance on Chris Cuomo’s prime-time program. In that session, Santorum said to Cuomo, “I was not trying to dismiss Native Americans. In fact, I mentioned that because, yes, they were here, and they did have an impact, in fact, in this country . . . 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.”
A senior network executive told HuffPost that after that performance, CNN’s anchors were understandably reluctant to book Santorum. The analyst, thus, was effectively “benched” over the situation.
CNN has had more than a little trouble with conservative pundits following Trump’s rise. It hired several ardently pro-Trump voices — including Jeffrey Lord, Jason Miller, Paris Dennard and Ed Martin — to ensure that its political segments were appropriately balanced. Some of those segments turned out to be appropriately bonkers, instead. On a network that beats its chest over factual accuracy, it was tough to employ pundits dedicated to defending a lying president.
Santorum projected a different sensibility: A conservative from Pennsylvania who’d served two terms in the Senate and ran twice for president, he showed a degree of independence from Trump in his commentary. On several occasions, he managed to criticize Trump’s excesses in ways that the designated pro-Trumpers wouldn’t have dared. As The Post’s Jeremy Barr noted, Santorum praised the network in a 2019 interview for its openness: “The beautiful thing about CNN is: No holds barred, I can say whatever I want to say and however I want to say it. They’ve been very good folks to work with.”
In a Saturday statement, Santorum said, “When I signed on with CNN, I understood that I would be providing commentary that is not regularly heard by the typical CNN viewer. I greatly appreciate the opportunity CNN provided me over the past four years and I am committed to continuing the fight for our conservative principles and values.”
Perhaps the former senator is giving himself a bit too much credit here. His commentary — a mix of social conservatism, occasional Trump butt-covering and media bashing — is widely available elsewhere, and CNN wouldn’t be terribly hard-pressed to replace it.
Whether it wants to is another matter. We’ve asked the network whether it’ll find another conservative voice to replace Santorum on all those gabby panel discussions, and haven’t gotten a response just yet. As it explores its options, it might consider one factor: All contributors screw up from time to time, and Santorum’s resistance to apologizing isn’t just a personal tic, but a banner trait of the Republican Party’s leader. It tends to trickle down.
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Opinion by Erik Wemple
Erik Wemple, The Washington Post's media critic, focuses on the cable-news industry. Before joining The Post, he ran a short-lived and much publicized local online news operation, and for eight years served as editor of Washington City Paper. Twitter
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