Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren hit back at President Donald Trump for his latest ‘Pocahontas slam’ by bringing up sexual violence committed against native American women.
Trump returned to the familiar attack during a Pennsylvania rally Saturday night, mocking Warren, who has claimed native heritage based on family stories from her Oklahoma relatives, but does not claim membership in a tribe.
‘Can you imagine covering Bernie or Pocahontas? How about that?’ Trump asked the crowd.
Warren had tried to deal with the issue in a speech last month to the National Congress of American Indians, vowing to use the attacks to ‘lift up’ native peoples every time she is attacked.
In a Sunday interview with CNN ‘State of the Union, Warren tried to do just that by bringing up native women who are victims of sexual violence.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded to President Trump’s latest attack by bringing up native women who are victims of sexual violence
‘He wants to try to attack me, I’m gonna use it as a chance to try and lift up their stories. And I’m going to do that right now, by pointing out that more than half of all native women in this country have been the victims of sexual violence,’ Warren said, pivoting to the issue after restating what she has said previously about her family story.
‘And more than half of them are attacked by non-natives. And the American government is doing nothing about this,’ she said. ‘This is an issue that’s happening right here in America.’
Warren was asked on CNN to respond to Trump’s ‘Pocahontas’ attack
‘Can you imagine covering Bernie or Pocahontas? How about that?’ Trump asked the crowd Saturday night
‘Native women are subjected to sexual violence at rates much higher than any other group in our country,’ she continued. ‘We need to put some focus on this and we need to make some changes on this.’
Earlier, she told CNN’s Jim Acosta ”I am not running for president in 2020,’ and said she had learned of native heritage from her parents, saying her father’s family had concerns about their parents’ union because of her mother’s native heritage.
Warren has said she didn’t use her heritage claim to get ahead, although she ended up in university directories listed as minority faculty.
‘It’s about my family’s story,’ she said. ‘My family’s story is deeply a part of me and a part of our brothers’. It’s what we learned from our parents. It’s what we learned from our grandparents. It’s what we learned from our aunts and our uncles,’ Warren told CNN.
Warren told a Native American gathering last month: ‘”Every time someone brings up my family’s story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.’
FILE – In this July 24, 2017 file photo, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks in a park in Berryville, Va., where Congressional Democrats unveiled their new agenda
Warren also responded to host Chuck Todd on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ who asked about the subject and whether she would go along with a Berkshire Eagle editorial asking her to take a DNA test to resolve the issue.
‘Look, I do know. I know who I am. And never used it for anything. Never got any benefit from it anywhere. But what I did a couple of weeks ago is I went to talk to the leaders of the native tribes across the country. And I talked about the fact that President Trump can’t seem to hear my name without trying to throw a racial slur into it. Can’t seem to make it through a ceremony honoring Native American war heroes without trying to make something else out of it,’ she said.
She then made the same point about native women and sexual violence.
‘And the United States government does nothing about that. That is just fundamentally wrong. This is a group that is being injured every single day. We need to bring some attention to it and we need to put some resources on it. And we need to make a change,’ Warren said.