Elizabeth Warren's Fake 'Cherokee Heritage DNA Test' Threatens Her 2020 Bid
Warren's past continues to haunt her as she launches her 2020 presidential bid
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As Sen. Elizabeth Warren launches her 2020 presidential bid in Iowa, her past continues to haunt her following her claims to Cherokee heritage via a fake DNA test from a company founded by her ex-husband.
Addressing supporters in Sioux City on Saturday on her tour of Iowa, she spoke about her 'working-class upbringing' before vowing to tackle corruption.
But Warren can't escape her past.
The first question from the audience did not concern her agenda, but about her fake Native American lineage.
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"My question to you: Why did you undergo the DNA testing and give Donald Trump more fodder to be a bully?" a woman asked.
Seemingly undisturbed by the question, Warren said that she was "glad for us to have a chance to talk about it."
Donald Trump famously blasted Sen. Warren for claiming to have Cherokee heritage, calling it a "fraud" against the public.
The president also mocked her newly released DNA test - that proves she has no more Native American ancestry than the average American - as "bogus."
Warren then moved on to her ' treatment by Republicans,' who she claimed had "honed in on that part" of her history in the hope of making "a lot of hay out of it."
Then Warren finally admitted she was not a minority.
NIWRC is a nonprofit working to protect Native women from violence. More than half of all Native women have experienced sexual violence, and the majority of violent crimes against Native Americans are perpetrated by non-Natives.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 15, 2018
Send them your $1M check, @realDonaldTrump.
Pocahontas (the bad version), sometimes referred to as Elizabeth Warren, is getting slammed. She took a bogus DNA test and it showed that she may be 1/1024, far less than the average American. Now Cherokee Nation denies her, “DNA test is useless.” Even they don’t want her. Phony!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2018
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"I am not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe. Tribes – and only tribes – determine tribal citizenship," she said, adding that she knows the difference of "ancestry" and being a tribe member.
According to RT: Warren, who was frequently taunted by Trump as "fake Pocahontas," asked that he dish out $1 million to a charity of her choice, as he had agreed to do in July if she could prove that she is "an Indian."
When faced about the proposal, Trump told journalists that they had "better read [the transcript] again."
While Warren may feel justified by the results of the DNA test she published in October, any hopes that her Cherokee saga is over have proven to be wishful thinking.
What her test did is draw the anger of the very same Cherokee, who accused her of trivializing tribal ancestry, bringing the topic back into the spotlight.
"Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong," Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr said at the time, accusing Warren of "undermining tribal interests."
When Warren declared that she had formed an "exploratory committee" to consider a run for president, Twitter reacted with Pocahontas taunts and skepticism.
Trump, who laughed off Warren's chances of beating him in 2020, recently tweeted an image featuring Warren's campaign logo, with 2020 changed to "1/2020th."
The discussion about Warren's heritage stemmed from the 1980s and 1990s when she listed herself as a minority in university records.
A number of university officials referred to her as a Native American, with an article added in 1997 Fordham University Law Review calling her Harvard's "first woman of color," the New York Times reported back in 2012.
Warren argued that it was not an attempt to advance her academic career, as proposed by some critics, insisting that she genuinely thought she was a distant descendant of Cherokee and Delaware tribes.
