Santorum On Native American Comments: I Misspoke

The Hill reports:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in an interview late Monday said he “misspoke” during recent remarks dismissing the influence of Native American culture on the U.S. Santorum, a senior political commentator at CNN, appeared on the network to discuss the comments, which sparked criticism late last month. “This seemed like you were trying to erase diversity,” host Cuomo said, “in the interest of some White Christian right.”

“Just to be clear, what I was not saying was that Native American culture–I misspoke,” Santorum said. “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,” Santorum added. “The way we treated Native Americans was horrific.”

Read the full article. Santorum had said that America was “birthed from nothing” and that “there was nothing here.” As you can below, CNN host Don Lemon was not having it and raged about Santorum in a followup segment.