CNN has dropped former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator, a network spokeswoman confirmed on Saturday.

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The initial remarks on Native Americans were widely panned as ignorant, insensitive and racist. At the Young America’s Foundation event, Santorum argued there was “nothing here” before European settlers arrived.

“We came here and created a blank slate,” Santorum said. “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.”

The remarks prompted some Native Americans and progressives to call on CNN to drop Santorum.

“Televising someone with his views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust,” Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in a statement.

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