Native groups urge CNN to fire Rick Santorum over racist comments

Native American groups have joined growing calls for CNN to remove contributor Rick Santorum from the network, after he claimed “there was nothing here” when European colonisers “birthed a nation from nothing” upon arriving in what would become the United States.

He also said “there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

The former Republican senator and presidential candidate’s widely condemned remarks at a right-wing student conference on 23 April have prompted the National Congress of American Indians, the Native America Journalists Association and other Indigenous groups, among other organisations and outrage across social media, urging CNN to fire the network’s political commentator.

“We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing,” he said in a speech to the Young America’s Foundation Standing Up For Faith & Freedom conference in Pennsylvania last week.