CNN reacted quickly to a couple shaky comments made by Rick Sanchez by firing him only a day later. On air, Sanchez called Jon Stewart a bigot and questioned whether Jews should be considered a minority (Bauder). .
Sanchez was angered by a comment Stewart had made on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Stewart said that Sanchez's show received a tweet from House Republican leader John Boehner, which he referred to as "send a twit a tweet" (Bauder).
Sanchez replied during a satellite radio interview with Pete Dominick by saying, "He's upset that someone of my ilk is almost at his level." He went on to say that Stewart is bigoted toward "everybody else that's not like him," saying that he "can't relate to what I grew up with" after commenting that his family had been poor and that prejudice was directed at his father. Sanchez berated Stewart for looking "at the world through his mom, who was a school teacher, his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I'm so happy that he grew up in suburban middle class New Jersey home with everyone you could ever imagine" (Krakauer). When Dominick pointed out that Stewart himself would have seen prejudice as a Jew, Sanchez answered, "I'm telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?" and then added a sarcastic "yeah." He continued on saying, "I can't see someone not getting a job these days because they're Jewish" (Bauder). Also during the radio show, Sanchez commented on the "elite, Northeast establishment liberals" who "deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, not the top tier" (The Huffington Post). .
Born in Cuba, Sanchez began working for CNN in 2004 as a host of "Rick's List," a two-hour show on CNN's afternoon lineup.