Elizabeth Warren sent out a fundraising letter based on President Donald Trump’s “Pocahontas” quip Monday.
“Trump stood right next to those Native American war heroes and came after me with another racist slur,” Warren maintains in the emailed letter that concludes with a “donate” button.
In an Oval Office event honoring World War II Navajo code talkers on Monday, Trump issued a joke at Warren’s expense. “We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago,” the president said. “They call her ‘Pocahontas.’”
Warren claimed Native American ancestry as a law professor. She insists she wanted to meet others like herself. Critics contend she sought professional advantage through affirmative action programs. She attended Rutgers School of Law. Warren nevertheless ultimately landed a spot on the faculty of the Harvard School of Law.
Despite her blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, Warren maintains Native American ancestry. She offers no genealogical proof. Instead, she says family lore provides the basis of her claims. Yet even outlets sympathetic to Warren’s outlook scoff at her claims to American Indian ancestry.
The Atlantic, for instance, wrote in 2012:
Despite a nearly three week flap over her claim of “being Native American,” the progressive consumer advocate has been unable to point to evidence of Native heritage except for an unsubstantiated thirdhand report that she might be 1/32 Cherokee. Even if it could be proven, it wouldn’t qualify her to be a member of a tribe: Contrary to assertions in outlets from The New York Times to Mother Jones that having 1/32 Cherokee ancestry is “sufficient for tribal citizenship,” “Indian enough” for “the Cherokee Nation,” and “not a deal-breaker,” Warren would not be eligible to become a member of any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes based on the evidence so far surfaced by independent genealogists about her ancestry.
The “fake Indian” tag dogged Warren throughout her 2012 campaign against Senator Scott Brown. The law professor ultimately prevailed. Now the senior senator from Massachusetts considers a challenge to President Donald Trump in 2020.
In the solicitation for money, Warren doubles-down on the notion that she comes from Native American lineage and that the words Trump used to ridicule her really represent racism. She calls Trump a “bully” out to “silence” her.
“Let’s show Donald Trump that we’re sick of his racist slurs by getting to work to fight his agenda,” she writes. “Donald Trump can keep attacking my family — but I’m going to keep fighting for yours.”
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