The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., mocked Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren after her stilted video on Instagram Live, during which she cracked open a beer and took questions from her followers in an attempt to humanize her nascent presidential campaign.
In the video, Warren welcomed viewers before awkwardly making a point of getting a beer to drink. Responding to the video, Trump Jr. tweeted: "'Wow so woke and genuine, she really is one of us' SAID NO ONE EVER!!! Between this and the notion that it was a great idea to run with the yea 1/1024th really is Native American, I really want to know who is advising her...and buy that person a beer."
Warren, 69, has long claimed Native American ancestry because of a story passed down through her family. President Donald Trump has used this in his attacks on the Massachusetts senator, a potential 2020 election challenger, calling her "Fauxcahontas."
"Wow so woke and genuine, she really is one of us" SAID NO ONE EVER!!!
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 2, 2019
Between this and the notion that is was a great idea to run with the yea 1/1024th really is Native American, I really want to know who is advising her... and buy that person a beer. https://t.co/jldQPujCrG
Related: Did Donald Trump Jr. lie for his father?
This prompted Warren to get a DNA test, which confirmed she has a Native American background, although it is distant and just a small fraction of her ethnicity.
Her test results, which she released publicly, show "strong evidence" that she is somewhere between 1/64 and 1/1,024 Native American.
Warren took to Instagram for her live video on New Year's Eve after announcing she will form an exploratory presidential committee, confirming her interest in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
She launched the committee in a separate video that featured personal images of her family at home. The Oklahoma-born senator spoke about her early life in America and her parents' hard work to give her opportunities that were not available to them.
"In our country, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love," Warren says in the video. "That's a fundamental promise of America—a promise that should be true for everyone."
But support for Warren is declining among Democratic voters. According to a CNN poll in early December, just 3 percent of Democrats and those who lean toward the party said Warren is the candidate they would most likely support in the 2020 primaries, down from 8 percent in October.
That put Warren in seventh place on the list. At the top was former Vice President Joe Biden at 30 percent. In second place at 14 percent was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist who unsuccessfully ran against Hillary Clinton for the 2016 nomination. In third at 9 percent was Beto O'Rourke, a former U.S. representative who ran against Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the midterms, coming closer than many expected to tossing out the Republican incumbent.
On the same evening as Trump Jr.'s tweet mocking of her, Warren appeared on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and accused the president of accelerating corruption in Washington.
Trump is "what happens when corruption invades a system," Warren told Maddow. "Donald Trump is an accelerant. He takes a problem that has just been growing and growing and growing, and he just sets it off. And makes it worse than it ever was."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shane Croucher is a Senior Editor based in London, UK. He oversees the My Turn team. He has previously overseen ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
