During an interview Monday night with CNN's Chris Cumo, former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum tried to explain his offensive comments about the founding of North America and the continent's indigenous peoples as him simply misspeaking. "People said I'm trying to dismiss what we did to the Native Americans, far from it," Santorum said.
As Mediaite notes, Cuomo didn't love the response and continued to press him, but it was his colleague, Don Lemon, who really took aim at Santorum's words. Later in the evening Lemon and Cuomo were having a discussion about the interview, and Lemon noted that he was "furious" while watching it. "I cannot believe the first words out of his mouth weren't 'I'm sorry, I said something ignorant, I need to learn about the history of this country,'" Lemon said to Cuomo.
Things then got a little tense between Lemon and Cuomo as they went back and forth over how to respond to something like Santorum's interview (they both appeared to agree that Santorum's apology was unsatisfactory.) "Why are things like that said?" Cuomo asked Lemon, who replied by saying "that's not for me to answer. That's for [Santorum] to answer."
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Cuomo later said that Lemon needs "to do more than just echo the outrage" of the public and suggested Lemon's solution was nearing the territory of censorship. Lemon bristled at both those ideas, and, ultimately, the segment ended with the two agreeing to disagree, and Cuomo telling Lemon "I love you." Read more at Mediaite and watch the exchange below. Tim O'Donnell
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