Ultimately this doesn’t matter at all. It merely proves that an old family story (which are often untrue) turns out to be supported by evidence in this particular case. Or at least as much as it can be with today’s genetics testing. And not a cheap 23andme genetics-mill test either, but a genuine blind test by an expert at Stanford.
But it is interesting in this context:
Trump’s response? “I didn’t say that. You better read it again.”
Here’s what he literally said: “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.” And here’s how you can parse those words to avoid payment – the test merely proved that the genetic evidence is consistent with everything Warren’s parents told her. But it does not prove she’s genetically 100% from the geographic area currently comprised of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – to the contrary, there’s no evidence of East Indian background at all. So there, he doesn’t have to pay, nyaa nyaa and so on. That’s some expert-level reneging there.
But maybe he’ll sent a crack team of investigators to Hawaii, because I hear that’s an effective way to counter this sort of thing. Oh, and I’m absolutely certain people will continue to make fun of her heritage, because it was always about her politics and making fun of Native Americans and was never really about the truth of the story her parents told her.
Parsing Trump’s words to deny payment is more straightforward than that.
If Warren took a DNA test and the results showed Native American then Trump would pay. If the results came back with 0.0% (as I wager occurred) he would not. Warren went to an expert to conduct a separate test on the raw data, which Trump could reasonably object is a step beyond and highly questionable. His words you quote are, “if you take the test and it shows…”
If the expert’s analysis is accurate, it doesn’t comport with representing herself as Native American. That is the gist of the brouhaha.
As I’ve said before, I think it was an honest mistake on her part based on family stories. I have similar stories in my family and family members who have embraced Native American cultural identities to some extent.
The bend-over-backwards efforts to defend her mistake are about as silly as criticism of it.