Fake Native American Running for Presidency

Two of the least surprising events of 2018 occurred in this year’s final week. First, No. 3 Notre Dame lost (33-3) to No. 2 Clemson in what can only be described as a rout. The only thing surprising about it was that Notre Dame didn’t become the first undefeated college football team to be denied an invitation to the BCS series based on the weakness of their regular season opponents. With the exception of Michigan, not a single team that Notre Dame played remained in the Top 25 of the college football power rankings at the end of the regular season. Only the Notre Dame alumni (and not all of them) were surprised by the outcome. This was reminiscent of the 2014 BCS championship game when Alabama embarrassed Notre Dame 42-14, and when Oregon State buried Notre Dame 41-9 in a Fiesta Bowl match up that saw the only positive yardage for Notre Dame was based on a plethora of penalties assessed against Oregon State. But I digress.

The other least surprising event was that fake news media darling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) – herself a fake Native American – announced that she was running for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States. Wow! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Ms. Warren, affectionately referred to as Pocahontas by President Donald Trump, serves as the Senate’s resident scold. Draped in her omnipresent pastel linen blazer, Ms. Warren draws her sense of indignity to excess whether she is talking about soaking the rich or ordering from the lunch menu. She does not speak – she lectures, complete with a wagging forefinger. And when she lectures she demonstrates that she is a first class phony.

Ms. Warren rails against the rich and claims that they do not pay their fair share. But Ms. Warren is one of the rich. Her joint income tax returns indicate that she and her husband earn between $750,000 and $1,000,000 annually with less that twenty percent of that coming from her salary as a United States Senator. And while she dutifully pays her state and federal taxes as required by law, (a necessity if you have been preparing to run for president for the last four years) she does not pay anymore even though there is a specific provision that allows you to pay more if you don’t think you are paying enough. To Ms. Warren’s credit she has not created a phony charitable trust to increase her access to tax-free money ala Bill and Hillary Clinton. However, her net worth has increased significantly over her brief tenure in the United States Senate proving once again that politics is an easy road to riches.

But, as another phony rich white person, she has to demonstrate her “oneness” with the masses and in this regard she became a Native American – an Oklahoma Cherokee in fact. But before she used it to demonstrate her kinship with Middle America, she used it to advance her personal fortune. She claimed the title of Native American in order to secure a position with Harvard University as a person of color. Of course Harvard didn’t check into her bona fides because it benefited the university by bolstering its claim to a diverse faculty. Both Ms. Warren and Harvard waived the flag of diversity in all that they did thereafter (including her political campaigns). Meanwhile, a position specifically reserved for a Native American was filled by another rich white woman and the Cherokee tribe denied Ms. Warren’s claims.

But when you run your mouth someone is likely to call you out. (Remember Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s claims to military service in Vietnam and University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill’s claims to be a Native American.) And while many have questioned Ms. Warren’s claims to Native American ancestry, Mr. Trump drove a stake through its heart. He offered to donate $1 Million to charity if she could prove her claim and reminded her that for less than $100 she could have her DNA analyzed to determine her ancestry. Ms. Warren took the bait – but took it quietly. She didn’t go to Ancestry.com or 23 AND Me, or even National Geographic – no she hired a college professor of genetics, Carlos Bustamante. Whether she did it to try to control the message or out of fear that a commercial provider would leak the results, Ms. Warren got unwelcome news. The DNA tests did not confirm Ms. Warren’s claimed Native American ancestry, rather it said that it was possible that five genetic markers could have originated from Native American ancestry somewhere between 6 and ten generations previously – a fact that is resident in an overwhelming majority of European immigrants to America. In other words, Ms. Warren is no more Native American than the generations of Europeans who migrated to America.

But Ms. Warren pressed on sure that the fake news media would paper over her misleading claims. And sure enough the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post in a “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes” moment manufactured stories to claim that the DNA test was proof positive that she was correct about her ancestry.

In truth, does it make any difference whether your ancestry includes Native Americans, Africans, Scots or even French? No, it does not. But it should make a difference whether you falsely claim such ancestry in an effort to portray yourself as somebody you’re not. If Ms. Warren will lie about this, about what else will she lie?

What America doesn’t need as its next president is a persistent scold or a phony liberal or a cultural appropriator. What America doesn’t need is Elizabeth Warren.