Trump slams Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage story as 'fraud against the American public'
- Donald Trump slammed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for claiming Native American heritage, saying she defrauded the public by pretending to belong to another ethnicity.
- On Monday, Warren released the results of a DNA test that suggested she was between 1/32nd and 1/512th Native American.
- Members of the Cherokee Nation, and Warren's own party, attacked her use of a DNA test to prove ancestry, which doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny.
- But Trump went too far by saying Harvard wouldn't have accepted Warren without her claim to be a Native, as The Boston Globe reported in September.
President Donald Trump slammed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for claiming to be a Native American with a tweet on Tuesday which said she defrauded the public by pretending to belong to another ethnicity.
On Monday, Warren released the results of a DNA test that suggested she was between 1/32nd and 1/512th Native American. Trump has consistently attacked her for claiming to have Cherokee heritage while she was a professor at Harvard, often calling her "Pocahontas" as an insult.
She also created a website and released a five-minute video that features her family in Oklahoma, where she was born and raised, alongside the Stanford University professor who conducted the DNA test as part of her Senate reelection campaign.
However, other scientists have been quick to point out that DNA tests can't prove ancestry. Additionally, nearly all European-Americans with long enough family lines in the US have some trace amount of Native American DNA.
"Now that her claims of being of Indian heritage have turned out to be a scam and a lie, Elizabeth Warren should apologize for perpetrating this fraud against the American Public. Harvard called her 'a person of color' (amazing con), and would not have taken her otherwise!" Trump tweeted.
While Warren's claim has not been definitively disproven, her DNA press blitz appeared to backfire heavily.
Warren initially appeared triumphant and challenged Trump to make good on his July promise of donating $1 million to a charity of Warren's choice if a DNA test found that the senator had Native American heritage.
But Native Americans and her own party quickly turned on her.
David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama's strategist tweeted: "Pretty extraordinary video to surface even before you enter the race. It says: 1) @SenWarren is 100% running. 2 ) She thinks this Pocahontas crap is a potential problem. 3) She wants to dispose of it now, lest she be Birtherized. The risk I'm sure she considered? This elevates it."
Jim Messina, former President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign manager, tweeted: "Argue the substance all you want, but why 22 days before a crucial election where we MUST win house and senate to save America, why did @SenWarren have to do her announcement now? Why can't Dems ever stay focused???"
Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. called the test cited by Warren's report "useless" in determining tribal citizenship. He alleged she was "undermining tribal interests" with her "continued claims of tribal heritage."
"A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person's ancestors were indigenous to North or South America," Hoskin said in a statement.
However, Trump's attack on Warren appeared to go too far and become factually wrong when he stated that Harvard "would not have taken" her but for her claims to Native heritage.
The Boston Globe reported in September tha Harvard never considered Warren a Native American during the application process in the 1990s.
Warren has long been an outspoken Trump critic and remains a much-discussed potential presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2020.