President Donald Trump says that Democrat Elizabeth Warren's 2020 campaign has been "hurt very badly" after he set the "Pocahontas trap," which ultimately drew the senator to show voters that she has Native American ancestry through a DNA test.
"I do think Elizabeth Warren's been hurt very badly with the Pocahontas trap. I think she's been hurt badly. I may be wrong, but I think that was a big part of her credibility, and now all of a sudden it's gone," Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.
Warren had repeatedly dealt with questions about why she had listed herself as Native American in staff directories during her time in higher education throughout her Senate campaign in 2016. In 2012, the senator had told NPR she was "very proud" of her heritage.
"These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I'm very proud of it," Warren said.
But even after Warren successfully defeated Republican Scott Brown in 2016, Trump continued to press her on her Native American lineage. He began referring to the Massachusetts lawmaker using the slur Pocahontas and requested that she take a DNA test to prove her Native American status.
The president even once said that he would give Warren "a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian."
Warren did end up taking a DNA test, which estimated that she was 1/64th to 1/1024th Native American. The results were released in a video in fall 2018 and included comment from a geneticist.
The senator faced immediate scrutiny over the results, including from the Native American community, which called DNA tests "useless." Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said at the time that Warren was "undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage."
On Thursday night Warren offered an apology to the Cherokee Nation for her decision to take the DNA test to prove her heritage. A spokeswoman for the tribe told The Intercept that Warren called Bill John Baker, principal chief of Cherokee Nation, for a "brief and private" conversation.
The spokeswoman also told the news outlet that Cherokee Nation is "encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end."
President Trump also immediately jumped on the attacks, tweeting that Warren's test was a "scam."
"Now that her claims of being of Indian heritage have turned out to be a scam and a lie, Elizabeth Warren should apologize for perpetrating this fraud against the American Public," Trump wrote in one social media post.
At first, Trump denied making any promise to donate $1 million to charity if Warren completed the test. He then backtracked, claiming that he would have only paid the money if he had been able to "test her personally."
Trump's recent comments about Warren and her campaign come as several Democrats have announced presidential runs. Along with Warren, senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand have announced their 2020 bids.
The president told the Times that his opponents have "really drifted far left" and he thinks that some of their campaigns have come out "very flat." He also said that right now Harris is his biggest threat.
"I would say in terms of the opening act, I would say, would be her," Trump said about Harris. "A better crowd — better crowd, better enthusiasm."
This article has been updated to include Warren's apology to Cherokee Nation.
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Alexandra Hutzler is currently a staff writer on Newsweek's politics team. Prior to joining Newsweek in summer 2018, she was ... Read more
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