After being fired from CNN for racist comments about Native Americans, former Republican presidential candidate turned cable news greenroom habitué Rick Santorum followed the new playbook for right-wingers wronged by the media: He emerged from the greenroom of another immensely popular cable news show to whine about how he was being “canceled.”
On Monday, the former occupant of an interchangeable array of approved-for-television CNN panels was defiant, declaring to Sean Hannity that he had been “savaged for telling the truth.” In this case, Santorum’s “truth” was a reference to his comments that the United States was a “blank slate” at the time of its founding and the backlash that ensued when less historically illiterate commentators took note of the logic Santorum deployed to erase that slate. “I mean, yes we have Native Americans,” he said, “but, candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
History may judge that analysis as perhaps somewhat less than candid, given what happened to the culture of Native people. Nevertheless, Santorum insisted to Hannity that he was a victim of the “intolerance of the left … and the cancel culture that is flowing from it,” and that his comments about Native American culture were accurate. “I assume the application is in at Fox, or no?” Hannity joked. Indeed, some American cultures seem remarkably persistent.
Santorum’s dismissal points to larger problems at CNN, as well as the “both sides” style of debate it has clung to, even as the Republican Party has grown more radical. During Donald Trump’s rise, the network took on a raft of pro-Trump pundits, such as Corey Lewandowski, Jeffrey Lord, and Kayleigh McEnany. Unlike those sycophants, Santorum had developed a reputation as having a modicum of independence and would sheepishly call out the former president from time to time. Santorum’s ouster, nevertheless, shows just how low the bar is for any Republican who isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool Trump loyalist. It also raises other questions about the network’s approach to journalistic ethics.
Though he was never cast as the “Trump loyalist” stock character by the news network, the former Pennsylvania congressman and senator was far from anodyne, and rarely thoughtful. His advice for students concerned about school shootings was to “learn CPR” instead of trying to change gun laws. He questioned climate change, suggesting that scientific findings were driven by greed. He portrayed a bombshell report on Trump’s taxes as made up; insisted that the former president would come to accept his 2020 loss and simply “needed time” to process the election results, and dismissed the former president’s reluctance to condemn white supremacists because he didn’t like to “say something bad about people who support him”—a standard you wouldn’t wager he’d allow his ideological opponents to take. It’s also the case that Santorum’s controversial and divisive worldview was well known to CNN at the time of his anointment as a panel regular: He first entered the public conversation in 2003 when, as a senator, he suggested that legalizing gay marriage would lead to the legalization of bestiality. (Still waiting for that prediction to come true.)
It’s certainly true that compared to sycophants like Lord and Lewandowski, Santorum would occasionally criticize Trump—Santorum, for instance, called his claims of election fraud “very disappointing and shocking.” These comments were, more often than not, cover: Santorum was on CNN panels not just to speak on behalf of Trump supporters and Republicans but to generate outrage and attention that the network could then turn into eyeballs (and revenue). After his CPR comments, for instance, CNN spent days replaying them, with different shows expressing how off-base they were. Fans of professional wrestling might recognize how this arrangement works. CNN got to have a “reasonable” Trump-supporting Republican on the air, and every once in a while, the network would have to give him a light slap on the wrist and maybe make a little hay over the demonstration. That was the bargain, and for a long while, everyone got exactly what they wanted.
But Santorum’s comments about Native Americans proved to be a bridge too far, especially considering that he refused to apologize for making them (he would only say he “misspoke”). It’s not clear when CNN will fill his place on its oversize panel desk or who they might tap to step into Santorum’s role. There aren’t very many Republicans out there who even want to straddle some polite line between “supporting” the former president and breaking with him at key moments, as Santorum did. It is especially difficult given that the entire Republican Party is committed to a massive assault on democracy.
But this episode also points to a selective application of personnel ethics at CNN. Santorum isn’t the only CNN talking head (or, in his case, recently severed CNN talking head) in the news for invoking “cancel culture.” A week earlier, The Washington Post reported that anchor Chris Cuomo had advised his brother, Andrew, to invoke the term in response to multiple allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior. Chris Cuomo, unlike Santorum, will keep his job. During a Tuesday town hall, the network’s chief executive, Jeff Zucker, told staffers that while Cuomo did “cross a line,” he decided the appropriate punishment was an on-air apology. (Cuomo told viewers, “It was a mistake because I put my colleagues here, who I believe are the best in the business, in a bad spot. I never intended for that, I would never intend for that, and I am sorry for that.”)
But the only reason Cuomo may be off the hook is because CNN is just as responsible for his infractions as he is. Last spring, the network happily allowed him to cover his own brother, who was then one of the most popular political figures in the country, mainly for his propensity to spar with Donald Trump during the Covid crisis (those occasional broadsides against the president glossing over the paucity of the governor’s own pandemic management).
Who could really chastise Chris Cuomo for acting like he was part of his governor’s Cabinet, when that was CNN’s own policy just a year earlier? This episode only underscores that the issue here isn’t about morality or ethics. Santorum essentially became expendable once a Democrat entered the White House and the nature of his role changed. Cuomo, despite committing the kind of ethical breach that would fell the career of a lesser light, remains a star at the network, a reliable source of ratings, revenue, and influence. That is, ultimately, what’s guiding the network’s decision-making, and inevitably it will be the basis for the next mistake it makes.
