Rebutting taunts, Warren releases DNA results on Native American ancestry
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Signaling even more strongly her intent to run for president, and to forcefully confront President Donald Trump, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday released the results of a DNA test that she said indicated she had Native American ancestry.
There is “strong evidence” that Ms. Warren has Native American pedigree “6-10 generations ago,” according to a document she released from Carlos Bustamante, a renowned geneticist from Stanford University. The error rate is less than 1-in-a-thousand, he said. The results of the DNA test were first reported Monday by The Boston Globe.
In releasing a DNA test, Ms. Warren, D-Mass., was rebutting the taunts of Mr. Trump and other conservatives, who have mocked her as “Pocahontas” and claimed she used her heritage to gain an advantage when she was a law professor.
But she also went further, creating a fact-check website that details her Indian ancestry, Oklahoma roots and includes documents that she says make clear her heritage “had no role whatsoever” in her academic career.
And in a carefully choreographed video that featured interviews with her conservative relatives, her former law school colleagues and Mr. Bustamante — as well as clips of the president mocking her — Ms. Warren fires what amounts to a warning shot against Mr. Trump.
It features footage from a rally Mr. Trump held earlier this year in which he vowed to contribute $1 million to Ms. Warren’s favorite charity if she took a DNA test and it showed she had Native American roots.
Then, as she talks to the geneticist over a speaker phone, Ms. Warren says: “Now the president likes to call my mother a liar, what do the facts say?” before she is told she “absolutely” has Native American ancestry.
The video is only the latest element of a monthslong effort by Ms. Warren, who is facing re-election next month, to prepare for a presidential bid.
In an email Monday to supporters, Ms. Warren said she “never expected the president of the United States to use my family’s story as a racist political joke against Native American history, culture, and people — over, and over, and over.”
The senator previously disclosed academic records indicating she did not use her ancestry to win preferential treatment as a law professor, released 10 years of tax returns and has sought to cultivate ties with the country’s Native American tribes.