WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning called Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a "complete and total Fraud," opening a second day of sparring between the current White House occupant and a likely 2020 challenger over her American Indian heritage.
In morning tweets, Trump claimed a DNA test shared by Warren on Monday was "a scam and a lie" and called on her to "apologize for perpetrating this fraud against the American Public."
The DNA test, conducted by a Stanford University professor, concluded that there was "strong evidence" that the senator had an American Indian in her family tree dating back six to 10 generations.
Trump seized on reports that the findings mean Warren is between 1/64th and 1/1,024th American Indian, depending on how distant her relative is.
"Pocahontas (the bad version), sometimes referred to as Elizabeth Warren, is getting slammed," Trump said in one of his tweets. "She took a bogus DNA test and it showed that she may be 1/1024, far less than the average American."
Trump also highlighted a statement from Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr., who said Monday that "a DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship" and that it was wrong to use one to claim any connection to the tribe.
"Even they don't want her. Phony!" Trump said, thanking the tribe in a subsequent tweet.
Trump also claimed that Warren would not have been hired as a Harvard law professor if not for claiming to be a "person of color." That claim is at odds with a Boston Globe report last month that found Warren's claim to American Indian ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty.
Trump tweeted, "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. Harvard called her 'a person of color' (amazing con), and would not have taken her otherwise!"
He followed that tweet with, "Thank you to the Cherokee Nation for revealing that Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, is a complete and total Fraud!"
Warren's release of the DNA report on Monday was accompanied by a nearly six-minute, campaign-style video that recounted her background and takes direct aim at Trump, with Warren saying his mocking of American Indians is "not what America stands for."
A Section on 10/17/2018