Elizabeth Warren to meet with tribal leaders in Oklahoma this weekend

Warren is still trying to live down her own personal cultural appropriation. This weekend she has invited representatives from 40 Native American tribes to a meeting with her in Oklahoma. The Washington Post reports that about 12 have already said they plan to attend, but the final tally won’t be known until Saturday when the tribes meet to discuss it:

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The previously unreported meeting will focus on Warren’s agenda for Native Americans and is part of a broader effort to highlight issues important to them. Warren is also trying to blunt the criticism she has faced over the years for appropriating Native American culture by identifying as such, according to three people familiar with the meeting who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it…

“It’ll be very heavy,” said NickyKay Michael, a member of the tribal council for the Delaware Tribe of Indians. “I don’t think they’ll be jumping up and down like they’d be for someone who was in their corner for a long time.”

Michael added that her tribal leaders will meet Saturday to determine whether to send a representative to the Warren event. The leadership, she said, is torn. “You don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot just because you’ve had a bad taste in your mouth for a long time,” Michael said.

Rolling Stone published an interview with Warren today. She was specifically asked about her decision to take a DNA test and she offered a very stock, non-responsive answer to the question:

Before you kicked off your presidential campaign, you released a video about your family background that seemed like it was intended to answer Trump’s taunts — you took him up on his challenge to take a DNA test. Did the reaction to the video change the way you think about how you would respond to those kinds of attacks from him in a general election?

I’ve learned a lot. I’m grateful for many conversations that people have had with me. Running for president has been about recognizing where I’ve made mistakes and have regrets, and also about how to listen and build the bridges that we’re all gonna need if we are able to create a strong enough movement to repair our democracy and take back our country.

But did it change the way you would respond to him specifically?

Donald Trump has a strategy of turning people against people. He thinks so long as people are arguing against each other that no one will notice that he and his corrupt buddies are stealing both the wealth and dignity of this country. He’s wrong, and 2020 is our chance to prove it.

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Warren was wrong to take the DNA test but she learned the wrong lesson from that debacle. She did it not just because Trump taunted her but because she refused to admit that she had been wrong all along. The DNA test was her last chance to try to win a losing argument. And frankly, she wouldn’t have done it if the media hadn’t worked so hard to give her a pass on what would have been considered an unpardonable sin by any Republican. She was surely counting on the media to ride to the rescue again when she released the test and, at first, they did. Here’s how the Boston Globe reported it at the time:

Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that provides “strong evidence’’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations, an unprecedented move by one of the top possible contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.

Warren, whose claims to Native American blood have been mocked by President Trump and other Republicans, provided the test results to the Globe on Sunday in an effort to defuse questions about her ancestry that have persisted for years. She planned an elaborate rollout Monday of the results as she aimed for widespread attention.

But reality finally popped the balloon she had inflated and now she’s content to blame Trump instead of her own foolish hubris. I hope the the trial leaders don’t fall for her mea culpa act. Elizabeth Warren is only sorry as a last resort and only when she’s caught. She hasn’t learned anything, not really.

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Just last month she lied to a group of black charter school activists about her kids going to public schools. Then, once she realized her lie wasn’t going to hold up, she had her campaign correct the record. Her son actually went to private schools most of his life. As far as I know, Warren still hasn’t explained how she made that mistake (literally saying “No, my children went to public schools.”) and that probably because the mainstream media hasn’t asked. Once again, they are protecting her. Once again it will probably take Donald Trump making it an issue for the media to belatedly admit there’s a problem.

Finally, I have to take a point of personal privilege on one aspect of the Post’s story about this:

Warren identified herself professionally as a Native American at various points in her life. In April 1986, she listed her race as “American Indian” on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas, according to a copy of that document obtained by The Washington Post. She also listed herself as a minority from 1986 to 1994 in the Association of American Law Schools directory.

While teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Warren had her race changed to Native American from white, university records show. Later, she requested that Harvard Law School list her as Native American after she was hired in 1995, according to the Boston Globe, which reviewed her personnel records.

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The Boston Globe stole that story from me. Back when I worked at Breitbart, a friend uncovered the document showing Warren had been listed as Native American and tipped me off to it. I wrote about it on May 11, 2012. On May 25, 2012, the Boston Globe published essentially the same story and proclaimed it a scoop. I was mad as hell about it and wound up having a conversation with the author who admitted to me that she’d read my story before writing hers. I tried to talk to the Globe’s editor and force them to at least credit me in the story, but he wouldn’t respond to my emails or calls. I realize it has been a few years but it’s still irritating that the Boston Globe routinely gets credited for an important story I had already written two weeks earlier.

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Beege Welborn 5:00 PM | December 24, 2024
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