Elizabeth Warren Took a DNA Test to Shut Trump Up
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren addressed her Native American heritage ahead of a likely presidential bid with a new DNA test, per the Boston Globe. Warren previously claimed Native American ancestry and, as a result, has been the subject of insults by Trump, who has repeatedly called her “Pocahontas.” His followers and supporters take it even further, whooping and wielding tomahawks to disparage Warren and her family.
Trump’s obsession with heritage stretches back to the Obama era, when he alleged that Obama wasn’t American. Obama responded by releasing the long-form version of his birth certificate. Warren took that move a step further.
Warren compiled her results into a five-minute ad directly responding to Trump’s insults. It starts off with her three older brothers, who admit that, though Republican, they were disturbed by Trump’s reaction. Their mother was born in Oklahoma and was part Native American. That claim was supported by Warren’s DNA test, though it wasn’t taken through conventional means. Warren went to a member of the scientific advisory board for Ancestry, Dr. Carlos Bustamante.
Bustamante’s private lab conducted the test, proving there is “strong evidence” in support of Warren’s claims. He was able to narrow the results to six-to-10 generations prior to Warren. That puts her between 1/32nd and 1/1024th Native American. Although the majority of her DNA is European at this stage, her claim is credible: “The results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor,” Bustamante concluded.