Former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum on Friday rejected CNN's assessment that President Trump's anger toward the U.S. media made it easier for Saudi Arabia to murder dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The question came up on CNN after Trump praised Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., for slamming a reporter to the ground by saying someone who can do that is “my kind of guy.”

CNN's John Berman indicated that those kinds of comments could put Saudi Arabia at ease because it shows Trump might not be interested in getting to the bottom of what happened to Khashoggi, who disappeared after entering the Istanbul consulate to obtain paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée.

“I’m not saying that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered because of Greg Gianforte,” Berman said Friday morning. “But I am saying, though, is that if you’re the Saudi crown prince, you don’t look at the current White House and the Trump administration as an administration that necessarily stands up for the rights of journalists around the world.”

But Santorum rejected the idea that Trump is signaling the world that it's OK to murder members of the press.

“We have a media here that, unlike in other countries like in Saudi Arabia that‘s controlled by the government, this is a media that’s actually very, very hostile to this government,” Santorum said. “So I’m not too sure that you’re talking about apples to apples. Most of these authoritarian countries, journalists are not folks who are problematic to them."

"So I don’t think people look at what’s going on in America and apply it to how they do business," he said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned Thursday from a trip to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and he advised the president to give Riyadh a few more days to prove that they did not have any involvement in the assumed death and dismemberment of Khashoggi, who is a green card-holding, U.S. resident.