Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) effectively called President Donald Trump a welcher after she took a DNA test as he demanded on national television on the promise that he would donate $1 million to her favorite charity. While the test by a Stanford professor showed only that she was between 0.097 per cent and 0.156 per cent American Indian, it was still a DNA test. Warren called on Trump to donate to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. President Trump however initially denied that he ever made the offer and then changed the offer retroactively to require his testing Warren.
Many of us have wondered why Warren did not simply take a DNA test after she was challenged on her long-standing claim of being part Cherokee. Her alleged Indian status was noted by prior faculties, though as I have previously stated her credentials as an academic more than warranted her work on various prestigious law schools. Former colleagues have reaffirmed the view that Warren was added to these faculties on the merits of her considerable academic record. That academic career began with a debate scholarship at George Washington University.
If was not until this year that Warren publicly acknowledged a DNA test, but it was done not by one of the leading companies but by a single Stanford professor. Nevertheless, Stanford University Professor Carlos D. Bustamante is a respected academic in the field who has consulted on the national testing programs.
According to his analysis, Warren has a Native American ancestor from six to ten generations back. If Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother were Native American, she would be 1/32 Native American but it could date back further to 10 generations — making her only 1/1,024 Native American. Even a 1/32 heritage may not translate into what most people would view as being Native American, However Cherokee Nation principal chief Bill John Baker is 1/32 Cherokee by blood. Warren claims Cherokee and Delaware heritage.
Yet, it is the test that it is important issue for the quid pro quo offer. During a July 5th campaign rally , Trump declared “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian. I have a feeling she will say ‘no.’ ” She didn’t.
Trump can certainly argue that as little as 1/1,024 heritage should not be the basis for calling yourself Native American to any degree, but, as Professor Bustamante concluded, she does have Native American blood. The important thing, however, is not to deny the undeniable.
“Who cares?” he said. “I didn’t say that. You’d better read it again”:
ABC News
@ABC
Pres. Trump on Sen. Elizabeth Warren releasing results of DNA test: “Who cares?”
The results show “strong evidence” Warren had a Native American ancestor dating back several generations, The Boston Globe reported today. https://abcn.ws/2yDPztu
Trump denies he owes Warren either an apology or money. In the meantime, Warren critics are citing the statement of Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. that ‘Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage . . . Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven.” Others have noted that current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America.
That still leaves the fact that she took a DNA test and a leading academic found Native American blood.
Should Trump pay up?
Twilla Barnes.
The Cherokee Nation says good-bye to Lie-a-watha.
http://www.cherokee.org/News/Stories/20181015_Cherokee-Nation-responds-to-Senator-Warrens-DNA-test
If President Trump elects to donate the million dollars I would like to see him consider the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
That is a fine choice, one which he can do at any time. However, Elizabeth Warren has announced a different organization.
Darren Smith – Pine Ridge has 1.3 billion available to them which they refuse to take. It is from a SCOTUS case paying them for the Black Hills.
Darren Smith – I don’t think the Cherokee are responding favorably to her attempt to label herself. 😉 What is said in the letter is scientifically correct.
My husband is 1/64 Cherokee, Seminole or something Injun.
Since he is married to me, a Mexican gay male, that makes him Mexican be injection. I will defer to Paul C. Schulte to provide us the population genetics percentage🏳️🌈🍆😘
NB: Hardy–Weinberg Equation: p^2 + 2pq + q^2 = 1
NB2: Warren is full of caca
Bob & Jim
that makes him Mexican be injection.
Because you shot loads in his ass?
Bob and Jim – I am not aware of “fluid race injections” however in these days of gender fluidity, why the heck not. 😉 However, on the flip side, assuming there is a flip side, doesn’t that make you part Injun by injection? This is worthy of many science grants. Money is involved that we can siphon off. Think carefully about your answer. 🙂
“Money is involved that we can siphon off. ”
Sorry Paulie, though we realize you have an inter-racial marriage or cohabitation agreement or indentured Nanny, we are a monogamous married couple. We do not put out for money unless if you are offering your wife to clean up our bed sheets. 😍
Tabby, how is Grindr treating you after you blocked half of the members in the DC area? 🐷
Bob and Jim
oh for the good old days when gay men were discrete about their particular tastes and did not flaunt it and impose on others. the same good old days when heterosexuals kept their sexual activities private as well. i can’t adjust to the new situation where everyone wears it on their sleeves.
Arthur C Clarke said privacy is going to be erased by technology, many decades ago. Boy was he right. About that and a lot of other things.
Jealous. Thankfully it is illegal to beat your wife like the good ol days
ask Tabby for his sloppy seconds
Mr Kurtz – How about Oscar Wilde?
Bob and Jim – the key to any federal grant is to figure a way to siphon money off for personal use. 😉 No one was intending to pay you for sex, certainly not me. I was looking for a profit motive here. Even if it is just salaries.
Bob and Jim: Did you hear about the gay Irish couple? Gerald FitzPatrick and Patrick FitzGerald. 😂😂😂😂
He ought to piss her off and give a million $ to the Cherokee nation.
He should pay her 1/1024 th of a million dollars. To a charity of his choice.
Independent Bob – the offer was $1m to a charity of her choice if she could prove she was an Indian. She clearly has not done that. 😉 I really don’t think she is beyond statistical noise at this point.
I don’t know if Trump should pay up or not. However, based on this test , I am sending back her book , Pow Wow Chow and demanding a refund from Amazon. she is not Indian enough for me and i doubt these are authentic recipes from the Five Civilized Tribes : Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. I suspect these are Fake Recipes and that Warren has cooked the books to pass this off as authentic
earl hickey – you do know she plagiarized her entry, word for word? She didn’t even have the intellectual honesty to use her own recipe.
Paul Schulte– off topic– Yesterday I received a copy of “My Life on the Plains, or Personal Experience with Indians,” George Custer. It is a facsimile hard back of the original. Thanks for suggesting the idea to you know whom.
honestlawyermostly – enjoy. 🙂 Try to understand/read it from the time it was written in, not today. There are events in that book that will play out later at Big Horn (Greasy Grass).
Warren must prove beyond any doubt what she has been saying for many years and enriched her life with
That she (Warren) has Native American “Cherokee” Indian blood
As for what has been said about her DNA test is that Warren has (perhaps) a drop of either Mexican Peruvian or Columbian Indian blood
Not only does that not warrant a million dollar payout but odds would be against Warren in a Court of Law for lack of evidence to prove her case beyond any doubt about her claim of “Cherokee” blood which at this point has not been established
And apparently most doubt
…pow wow chow anyone!
As I stated in the comment just below, all of those are Amerindians and genetically indistinguishable.
About the test: If maternal DNA was tested, almost all indigenees are Amerindians, remote descendents of a single mother. So for such testing Cherokee is the same as every indigenee in South America.
In the contiguous USA there are also some Athabaskans, notably the Navaho.
The average black has more Native American blood in him the Warren does. Still, her whole contention was the story about her grandmother being demonstratably Native American so the parents were against the marriage. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I call BS.
When you start searching South and Central America for DNA, that does not make you Cherokee or Delaware.
Why should the “one drop” rule apply only to blacks, and not Indians? There are people such as Vallery Jarret who are regarded as black, but they certainly don’t look black. In an era where the law says that gender isn’t based on biology, but on what you “identify” as, it seems that criticizing someone who is actually, biologically of Indian ancestry, but isn’t “Indian enough” is rather hypocritical.
I think he should send the 1/1,024 portion of a million dollars to her designated charity. I can’t figure how much that would be, but around $32,000 is as close as I could get. He did make a bet and she has a teensy bit of Indian American. So a teensy amount of dollars to, I believe she designated where it should go on Twitter.
I think it’s about $976.56.
Sandra, the operative words in Trump’s statement were “If it shows you are an Indian.” It didn’t show that. If one claims it did then perhaps we are all black, hispanic, indian and white making affirmative action laws and other laws of this nature moot. Then we have to deal with Asian since it appears Harvard discriminates against those with Asian blood.
The left loves victimhood and likes to practice identity politics so they can tear the nation apart. I’d like to think that Warren is correct and see the left stop all this foolishness and get rid of identity politics. That is something the left won’t do because that is the only policy the left seems to consistently promote in society.
I’m just wondering, by Trump’s standards, how much ancestry it would take to “be an Indian.” 51%? 100%?
I believe some tribes set the threshhold at 25%.
She had an ancestor who lived in the old Indian Territory ca. 1895. (Most residents of the Indian Territory were white by that time). I’ve forgotten how many generations back in her family tree, but I think perhaps 3. Can she claim 12% aboriginal ancestry? No.
See Karen’s statement. “this predates when her ancestors immigrated to the US, which means she definitively is NOT Cherokee.”
How much ancestry to be Indian by Trump standards? We don’t know but certainly significantly more than what the average American has. Why do you care what his standards are? The question is moot. Warren lied and used her status as an American Indian to help Elizabeth Warren advance and not to help Indians that might need it.
You lefties are all the same. I would never lower myself to the level seen in lefties who will claim to be of another race, color, etc. just to get ahead. That just demonstrates a lack of values.
DNA testing shows Valerie Jarret with “46% African ancestry”.
That might be why she is identified, and maybe self-identifies, as black.
African as in Arab, or sub-Saharan? North Africans are racially designated as white.
Tin,
I’d have to go back to the Louis Gates program to see if they specified a region of Africa.
Wasn’t she born in Iran? Anyway, it doesn’t matter….I was just trying to make the point that people of mixed race don’t always identify with their predominate ancestry; nor should they have to. Kamala Harris is half Asian (Indian), 1/4 white and 1/4 black, yet she identifies as black. Ben Jealous, past president of the NAACP is 3/4 white, yet identifies as black. And E. Warren has never claimed to be an Indian. She identifies as white, with some Indian ancestry.
TIN – starting when we are in school, the government teaches us that if we bi or tri racial we have to throw one or more of them under the bus. There is only one choice of the form for race. We had students who were bi-racial refuse to select one for us and we were required by law to select for them. We selected the one most advantages to us. That is the same problem with the Census forms, there is only one correct answer. So, the correct answer is the one that gets me the most stuff.
Warren’s DNA expert says the most he can say with certainty is that Warren had one Native American ancestor 10-generatios ago. A generation is 25 years, meaning the ancestor was 250 years ago. By that standard, we are have royal blood!
Seriously, what is that mathematically? .0001% Native American? Certainly not a significant result and certainly not entitling Warren to lay claim to Native American heritage – either as a congressperson on the stump, in a job application or in a graduate school or college application.
Notably, and contrary to (alleged) warren family lore, Warren’s grandmother, the test shows, was definitely NOT Native American, since the relative would have been a great , great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother/grandfather or relative ten generations removed – with no other “Indians” in the genetic wood-pile.
By this standard, Trump can probably lay claim to being African American! Kanye, my brother!
What it does stake claim to…
Is Warren exploiting the “Cherokee” people for personal and financial gain
Not at all.
David, have you taken up the practice of reading minds again or are you just reading the next talking point from the throwaway leftist talking point sheet?
As we all know, The Donald doesn’t pay his debts.
And you don’t provide your cites. What shall we make of that?
Nothing. It’s well known that when Trump was in business, that he stiffed his contractors.
It is well known that he paid contractors and that he had minorities and women in higher positions than other people in the same business. It is also known that prior reputation counts when drawing up a contract or making a deal. One has to wonder why all those people flocked to Trump deals or to work for Trump. The reason is they thought they could make money.
I never promised to do so.
David, when others make a comment you ask for a citation. When they provide it to you, you run away and hide. Think of our recent discussion where I provided you the Concord Study and some of its data. Like a frightened kid you ran away.
The operative words were: “If it shows you are an Indian.” The report didn’t show she was an Indian or from an Indian tribe that was under discussion. This demonstrates how your mind doesn’t think.
I am either 1/16th or 1/32nd Amerindian. So what?
Warren is 1/1000 American Indian, apparently.
But possibly as much as 1/32. But she has never claimed belonging to any particular tribe.
Jay S – Warren has claimed linage to both the Delaware and Cherokee Tribes. Now she has pissed of two tribes. The Cherokee are better record keepers than the Germans. You do not want to piss them off. They have been stalking her like a game animal. 😉
Looks like the Cherokees aren’t buying this 1/64th forked tongue heritage stuff either:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/15/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-prompts-cherokee-backlas/
The backlash grows.
I don’t think Elizabeth Warren called anybody a “Welcher” and I don’t think Jonathan Turley should either, since it’s an ethic slur, which the OED says is based on the alleged dishonesty of the Welsh people. Essentially the same as saying someone “Jewed” somebody, or someone was “Gyped.”
I think Trump should have been more specific and said that the $1 million would be paid only if it showed a certain percentage of Indian ancestry from North American Indians. I would think it would have to be at least 1/16. And with the statement of the Cherokee Nations Secretary of State, stating that what her test showed would not qualify her as a Cherokee Nations member, I don’t think she has passed the threshold of establishing American Indian ancestry for the purpose of Trump having to pay off on that.
I disagree. Trump said he would make a donation to charity if she took a DNA test and it showed that she has Indian blood. She took him up on it and passed. He was the one who made the bet, and he didn’t set any minimum blood quantum. Being genetically a Native American and being a member of a tribal nation are two entirely different matters. The first is a matter of genetics, the second is a legal matter. I am 100% Irish and my DNA test proves it, but I am not a citizen of Ireland. Trump should honor his word and pay up.
TIN:
The test proved that she at most has 1/64 the DNA found in Central and South American Indians. There wasn’t enough Cherokee DNA to test because the Indians think it’s immoral to donate their DNA. One sixty fourth is about the same amount of Indian blood most white folks have. Would you pay up on this? Here’s also betting this isn’t her first DNA test!
If Cherokees think it is immoral to spit in a test tube, then how does their Secretary of State, Hoskins or whatever his name is, know that he is 1/32 Cherokee? Which, I might point out, isn’t very much. Other tribes generally set the minimum for tribal membership at 1/16.
My father was 100% Norwegian.
Earl Warren was of Norwegian ancestry. I read that his father pronounced the name “Vahren.” I think Elizabeth Warren looks more Norwegian than anything else, but I don’t think of Oklahoma as a place that Norwegians would have migrated to….
So are you denying that all homo sapiens came from one evolutionary Adam and Eve? To say that someone has “Norwegian” or any other ancestry means that for a long period of time an ancestor lived in a given region, but earlier ancestors lived in other regions so why claim ancestry from any one particular region unless it is the horn of Africa where authorities claim we all originated?
Wasn’t the Horn of Africa.
Sam – it is going to come as a great shock to Benson that the Vikings ran raids into North Africa trading slaves. Although, North Africa is consider white, subSaharan Africa is generally considered black. The Vikings picked up a few blacks along the way.
Trump’s exact words were “if you take the test and it shows that you’re an Indian.
He did not say “if it showed she had Indian blood”.
Whatever tiny fraction of “Indian blood” Sen. Warren might have, it’s a stretch to claim she is “an Indian”.
So, how much Indian blood do you suppose it would take to have Trump concede she was an Indian? (hint: Trump has never conceded ANYTHING in his life)
You mean Trump is now culpable because you don’t have the answer to that question? Hint: one great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother doesn’t cut it.
Trump doesn’t have to set anything up
Warren already did that by saying “Cherokee” blood
It is up to Warren to prove her accusations
Not the other way around
…and PS
All Warren said about her “Cherokee” bloodline is available on video or in print
The burden of proof is on Warren
I think he meant 1,000,000 wampum which is redeemable at Fort Ticonderoga for a new blanket to use in her teepee.
Since Warren has abut as much “Indian” (or Peruvian of Ecuadorian) blood in her as most other white folks, I”ll give you an all Indian band playing the Cherokee theme song. Hit it PAUL:
https://youtu.be/21ixwIaN7qw
I doubt that “most other white folks” have Indian blood. I grew up in CA, in an area with quite a few tribes, but I didn’t know any whites with Indian blood. For legal, social and cultural reasons, there wasn’t much mixing between the races.
My brother submitted a sample to 23 and Me. Turns out our ancestry is 0.1% Amerindian, just like Fauxcahontas. The number of known ancestors we have who grew up west of Michigan or south of Tennessee is nil.
Well that explains why you can’t hold your liquor and post such stupid comments.
” I didn’t know any whites with Indian blood.”
Are you trying to tell us that everyone you knew took a DNA test?
I am very disappointed in you using “half” truths in you write up. I know words mean something to you and find you one of the fairest commentators around. Pres. Trump never offered to pay 1 million based on any DNA test, he only offered to PAY if she agreed during his debate with her to take “HIS” test. Those events have not happened so how can he owe her anything. No wonder our society is falling apart when even someone like you fails to provide the clear and concise facts.
Yeah, I have to wonder what “HIS” test would be….. that would be more scientific or authentic than a DNA test?
Chet — That wasn’t his original words. It is only his pathetic attempt to weasel out of paying.
“If it shows you are an Indian.”
Those are the words. The test did not show her to be an Indian.
Elizabeth Warren translated to Cherokee is, “Lotta Bull.” I pray to God she wins the DNC nomination for POTUS. My dog is more Cherokee than Warren.
Well, she’s at best 1/64th (See WaPo correction of its math) of something and likely 1/1024th. The “expert” she hired couldn’t find enough Cherokee DNA so he used Central and South American Indian variety, so she might be Peruvian or Ecuadorian. Or she might be what the Cherokee call her “Sitting Fraud.”
Here’s the history of the correction from the Boston Globe which the WaPo picked up on:
“UPDATE: The Globe corrected its lower estimate sometime before 10:20 AM, when readers noticed the update. Nearly four hours later, it has similarly corrected the math on its sixth-generation figure from 1/32 to 1/64 — which puts Warren’s most optimistic claim to Native ancestry below 2 percent of her DNA.”
So the press’ math is about as good as it genetic analysis.