- What am I going as for Halloween?
A nerd!
Don't ask surprised.
Pocahontas, if you've paid even a little attention
to the political world lately,
you know that's President Donald Trump's
preferred nickname for Elizabeth Warren,
the democratic senator from Massachusetts.
It's an admittedly crude reference
to her claim that she is of Native American descent
and Trump's somewhat fact-free response
that Warren claimed her status as a minority
to get ahead in the world of academia.
So why does any of this matter you ask.
Well, because Warren is running.
Mmm, should I say, considering running
for president in 2020 against,
you guessed it, Donald John Trump.
Which brings us to what Warren did recently,
out of the blue, she released a five plus minute video
in which she travels back to her hometown,
that's Norman Oklahoma,
to extensively trace her family tree.
The video is slickly produced and has all the hallmarks
of a video someone running for president,
or considering running for president.
(bell dings) Would make.
There's the folksy conversation
with Warren's extended family
about their hearth's gravel roots.
The shots of Warren doing normal people stuff,
you know, like walking and pointing at things
and repeated mentions of how Warren's mother
always told her family that she was
of Native American heritage.
And then comes the big reveal.
Warren, on the phone with renowned Stanford geneticist,
Carlos Bustamante, he's an advisor to 23andMe,
we've all heard of that, asked whether Trump is right,
or her mother is right and if she does in fact
have Native American ancestry.
Bustamante responds that.
- The facts suggest that you absoulutely
have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree.
- Which, if you ask me is not exactly definitive.
Think of it this way, if I go to the doctor for a physical
and at the end, when I ask them if I'm healthy,
he says, quote, the facts suggest
that you absolutely are healthy,
I'm feeling good, but I'm not feeling great, right?
I'd rather have heard, you are absolutely healthy!
You are going to live until you are 120 years old.
The word, suggest, from Bustamante throws a decent slice
of doubt into the proceedings.
The conclusion from Warren's DNA test.
A test Trump himself has routinely called on her to take
doesn't help her case all that much either.
She is, according to the best estimate
somewhere between 1/64 an 1/1,024 Native American.
1/1,024!
That's 0.0097%, which is not a lot.
Now sidebar on the timing of all of this.
Warren's people say the results were released
soon after she got them, which, fine.
But of course, DNA tests measure one thing,
and we know ethnic identity is complex.
That's something that the Secretary of State
for the Cherokee Nation brought up
in his response to the whole thing, saying quote,
"Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection
"to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation,
even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong."
That's Chuck Hoskin Jr., he added,
"Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests
"with her continued claims of tribal heritage."
Ugh.
All of which leaves me wondering why did Warren
do this DNA thing at all?
Yes, of course, I get what she was trying to do.
She knew that Trump's Pocahontas attack
was doing her some damage among skiddish democrats
who don't wanna nominate someone in 2020
who has a gaping weakness that Trump,
the biggest bully on the block,
would and could exploit.
Warren wanted to show that she couldn't
and wouldn't be swift-boated.
What do I mean by that term?
Democrats are still bitter about the 2004 campaign
in which a number of men who had served
with Massachusetts Senator, John Kerry,
on swift-boats in Vietnam claimed
that he had badly exaggerated his acts of bravery
during the war.
Kerry was caught flat-footed by an attack
on what most people believe was his greatest strength,
his military service in Vietnam and really never recovered,
losing to George W. Bush.
So Warren wanted to tell democrats that she was ready
for Trump's attacks and had the facts 100% on her side.
That he would come at her, but she would punch back hard
and effectively.
She wanted to reassure them that there was no danger
that in nominating her, they could be risking their chances
of beating Trump, their last chance
at beating Trump in 2020.
Sidebar, democrats are also still haunted
by Hilary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016.
A defeat they lay, at least in part,
at the feet of the fact that she simply had
too much baggage from past political fights
that he could and did exploit effectively.
All the while amazingly side-stepping the baggage
he had of his own.
The problem here is that Warren's video and DNA test
didn't tie things up in a nice bow for her or democrats.
Even the most favorable reading
of what Warren's DNA test showed
is that there's a high probability
that she has a tiny bit of Native American blood in her.
Now, that fact doesn't change this fact.
That when the story first broke, way back in 2012,
Warren initially said she had no idea
that she was not only listed,
but touted as a minority by Harvard Law School.
She then had to acknowledge that she had listed
her minority status on some federal forms.
Another sidebar, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania
continue to say that her ancestry
was not a factor in her hiring.
Now the DNA test doesn't offer any sort
of conclusive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, evidence
of Warren's Native American heritage,
and therefore it remains today what it's been
for the past six years.
It's an effective attack line for her political opponents,
democrats and republicans.
Enter Trump.
He tweeted, quote, "Pocahontas, the bad version,
"sometimes referred to as Elizabeth Warren
"is getting slammed.
"She took a bogus DNA test and it showed
"that she may be 1/1,024,
"far less than the average American.
"Now Cherokee Nation denies her.
"DNA test is useless.
"Even they don't want her.
"Phony!"
Then he tweeted again.
"Elizabeth Warren is being hammered, even by the left.
"Her false claim of Indian heritage
is only selling to very low IQ individuals."
This is of course what Trump does.
He boasts, he brags, he bullies.
But Warren's DNA test reveal was aimed
at taking potent arrow out of Donald Trump's quiver.
Instead, she gave him lots more ammunition.
And that is ThePo!nt.
We do this every week, twice.
Check back every Tuesday and Thursday
for brand new episodes.
(jazz music)