Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump continue their squabble over whether she has a Cherokee heritage: DNA test performed. By David Martosko.
President Donald Trump mocked Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday, hours after she trumpeted the results of a DNA analysis that concluded she was between 0.097 per cent and 0.156 per cent American Indian.
What’s the percentage? One one-thousandth?’ the president asked reporters during a short briefing in Warner Robins, Georgia, where he and first lady Melania Trump were surveying hurricane wreckage.
Asked if he owed Warren an apology for relentlessly ridiculing her claims of Cherokee lineage, he scoffed while Melania smiled broadly.
‘No I don’t. Absolutely. Do I owe her? — She owes the country an apology!’ he snarked. …
Trump had already jeered the DNA report, issued by a Stanford University geneticist who determined that a small amount of Warren’s genome points to an American Indian ancestor.
Warren released a heavily produced video Monday along with a raft of related documents, strongly indicating she plans to run for president in 2020 – and that she considers herself vulnerable to Trump’s frequent barbs on the topic.
The president pooh-poohed Warren’s scripted public-relations rollout before he left the White House on Monday, swatting down her claim that during a July rally in Montana he had offered a $1 million charitable donation in the event she could prove her Cherokee heritage.
‘I didn’t say that,’ he insisted. ‘You’d better read it again.’
Hours later in Georgia, Trump clarified that his seven-figure offer would only apply if he were to challenge her to provide a DNA sample in the context of a presidential debate — and oversee the testing himself.
‘You mean if she gets the nomination? In a debate, where I was going to have her tested?’ he asked. …
DNA test shows Warren is less than average Indian for a European -American:
Carlos D. Bustamante, the scientist who analyzed Warren’s DNA data, concluded that ‘the vast majority’ of her ancestry is European. But ‘the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor,’ he wrote.
That forefather — or foremother — could have been between six and 10 generations ago, meaning she could be as much as 1/64 Native American, or as little as 1/1024.
The lower end of that range corresponds to 0.097 per cent, which would make Warren less Indian than the average European-American.
A landmark study published in 2014 in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that European-American genomes are, on average, 0.18 per cent American Indian.
From Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr.:
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. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.
Charles:
The first time in her life she clamed to be a minority was when she applied for the job at Harvard. She did not use that when she initially applied to college or for anything else throughout her life. Harvard could then also claim they had a professor with minority status.
hat-tip Charles
