NEW YORK – CNN fired Rick Sanchez on Friday, a day after the Cuban-born news anchor called Jon Stewart a bigot in a radio show interview where he also questioned whether Jews should be considered a minority.

Sanchez, who had worked at CNN since 2004, was host of the two-hour “Rick’s List” on CNN’s afternoon lineup. He did a prime-time version of that show in recent months, but that ended this week because the time slot is being filled by a new show featuring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and columnist Kathleen Parker.

Stewart had frequently poked fun at Sanchez on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” most recently for saying on the air that his show had received a tweet from House GOP leader John Boehner. Stewart called it a case of “send a twit a tweet.”

“He’s upset that someone of my ilk is almost at his level,” Sanchez told Pete Dominick in a satellite radio interview. Details of the interview were posted on the Mediaite website Friday and quickly became a topic of conversation in the media world.

Sanchez said that Stewart is bigoted toward “everybody else that’s not like him.” He said Stewart “can’t relate to what I grew up with,” saying his family had been poor and he had seen prejudice directed at his father.

Sanchez dismissed Dominick’s comment that Stewart, who is Jewish, is also a minority.

“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?” Sanchez said, adding a sarcastic “yeah.”