Donald Trump has reacted to Elizabeth Warren’s speech. How, you might wonder? Guess.
Pocahontas is at it again! Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth. Hope she is V.P. choice.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2016
If your bet was placed on “demeaning nickname, ethnic slur, and fact-free insult”, you’re a winner! Unfortunately, everyone bet that way, so this was basically an even odds gamble, and you just get your money back.
I was tempted to put a nickel on “substantive, intellectual response” because the odds on that meant I’d be a millionaire now, but decided it would just be throwing away five cents.
Warren replies.
No, seriously — Delete your account. https://t.co/O1u7oc0jAR
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) June 10, 2016
It’s clear what to do — just keep goading him.
If we’re throwing around taunting names, how about Trumplethinskin (stolen from Ed Brayton’s Facebook feed).
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/06/10/regurgitated-rhetoric
Not quite a fact free insult, Elizabeth Warren has been criticized by Cherokee and other Native American writers for falsely claiming Cherokee ancestry, and we shouldn’t dismiss that. At the same time, Trump’s way of pointing that out has obviously been racist. CNN had a good discussion of those two points as well as other racist speech in our political culture from Simon Moya-Smith: “Trump’s casual racism toward Native Americans”
Does Drumph really type these dundertweets? I bet it’s some underling barely out of highschool [typos as evidence], hoping to win his favor to be appointed Special Assistant to the Cabinet, or underSecretary to the official Secretaries. I just can’t see Drumph actually working a keyboard to fire off these tweets, he just dictates them to a stenographer (his slurred voice leading to the typos), or transcribed by a betaSiri.
pointless speculation.
A thin-skinned bully acting to type? Couldn’t do a better job of showing Warren she is absolutely correct in her description. Trump will be his own worst enemy.
The Trump winning formula.
If the odds were evens you’d double your money.
FishBrain PZ! Can’t even spell Meyer right! Throws discus like a girl.
@4 qwints
It may in fact be more true than not. If this is true: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/elizabeth-warren-is-part-native-american
Qwints:
That’s true, but it doesn’t fucking excuse the insult, which is multi-layered, and deeply upsetting to many NDNs. You might have kept up with indigenous coverage of this issue past 2012. More indigenous people are not much giving a shit about Warren’s claim, they are much more concerned with Trump, his ongoing racism, utter disrespect for Indigenous people and Indigenous issues, and his constant use of using Pocahontas as a slur.
Qwints:
Also, who is “we”? White people?
Just curious, but where does Trump get off with his “least productive” stuff? Ignoring that idiocy, as she has, is definitely her best move, but Enquiring Minds Want to Know.
Personally, I hope the summit between HRC and EW results in their agreeing EW will not run as Veep (which might be inhibiting) but will continue her laugh-a-minute scornfest. But they sure would make a formidable pair.
Um, I think the “fact-free insult” was calling her “one of the least productive US Senators.” Pocahontas was the ethnic slur, and “Goofy Elizabeth Warren” was the demeaning nickname.
@GrumpySanta, the Mother Jones article was based on a claim that was later withdrawn. Long story short, she’s like a lot of other white Americans who have family stories about a Native American ancestor, but who have no connection to any Native American tribe in living memory. I can’t speak for the Native American perspective, and I think it’s important that non-Native American liberals don’t dismiss the issue at the same time we’re correctly dismissing its racist use by the right. We need to read Native American voices on the issue.
Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Being Indian
Elizabeth Warren Finally Teaches a Lesson on Native Identity
Caine @ 12. Yep, white people like me and PZ.
Caine @11, Well said.
@ qwints
If 1/32 is cheating, explain this: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/appeal-filed-in-native-american-child-custody-case-lexi-choctaw/
@GrumpySanta, I think you’re misreading that author. She’s disparaging the idea that blood quantum is cheating. I see I messed up the link: “Elizabeth Warren and the Politics of Being Indian”. This author makes a similar point “‘Real’ Indians, the Vanishing Native Myth, and the Blood Quantum Question (“When [non-Native
people] demand to know how much “Indian blood” someone has, whether you realize it or not you are presuming the untruth of their identity claims, which is why the question can be so offensive.”
@danielhenschel, you’re probably right so I’ll drop it now. As Caine pointed out, obviously the use of Pocahontas is a slur.
Silly PZ – the betting is not on what Trump is going to say; it’s on which order the demeaning nickname the ethnic slur and the fact-free insult are going to be in.
Trump is consolidating his base (and base is the mot juste). But I keep expecting to hear that he has suddenly discovered he has a previously unknown medical condition (faceplantaritis) and is reluctantly compelled to stop chasing a job that, let’s face it, pays less than half a million a year, though it does come with excellent benefits.
An amazing way to goad the guy that I’ve seen making the rounds on Twitter would be to keep the rumor going that Romney is actually richer than Trump. Think about how that would play out when Trump inevitably threw a fit about it. “You think THAT out of touch guy is rich? Please. I’M the real out of touch rich guy!”
if she hasn’t already, hills may well start measuring those drapes now. the gop will never have enough extinguishers to put out trump’s daily dumpster fires all the way to november.
aarrgghh wrote:
Plenty of serious, “respectable” Republicans underestimated Trump and he ended up being their party’s nominee. Trump proved that things like qualifications, experience, and rational policy are merely “nice-to-haves” in a Presidential candidate. The Republicans don’t have to put out Trump’s fires, because they haven’t been actually hurting the candidate.
Does Trump think that he is part of the 1%?
What, you haven’t met his Chief Nickname Strategist?
That is brilliant. Ed needs to make some t-shirts.
I heard an interesting opinion on the Trump candidacy. As everybody not wearing one of those stupid red hats should have noticed, even when giving supposed policy talks, half the speech is boasting. When he’s reading off a teleprompter, he still can’t resist going off on self-aggrandizing tangents at random intervals. His braggadocio cannot be restrained.* He is by far the most important thing in his world and his name is a close 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th, ad infinitum). Anyway, the opinion was that as much as his narcissism wants him to win, as much as he covets the title, he has shown no interest in the actual job. So, the theory goes, if he starts getting too far behind in the polls, or starts feeling that his brand is taking too much of a hit, he might just cut his losses and let Alex Jones blame it all on The Bohemian Grove, The Bilderberg Group, or Lizard Space People (whatever the dart lands on). He feels no allegiance to the Republicans and doesn’t fear the Dems, so why not just quit in a huff about the “Establishment” and “rigged system”? Shout a bit on Fox and talk radio. *cough* Rehire *cough* the investigators he sent to find Obama’s birth certificate. Threaten a few lawsuits. And then just go back to grifting, gold-plating and golf.
On a lighter note, today’s Bizarro made me chuckle: http://bizarro.com/comics/june-10-2016/
*Imagine being in charge of Trump’s teleprompter: “Scroll. Scroll. Pause. Scroll. *sigh* Pause. Scroll. Scroll. SHIT! Rewind. *grumble* Scroll. Pause. Scroll. SHIT!”
I am not going to defend Warrens’ claims to Indian ancestry, but I would like to point out that that it does not mean much if a person can’t find an Indian ancestor on the Rolls . One needs to look at the rationale and the criteria that were applied to those seeking admission to the Indian tribes in Oklahoma around 1900 to understand what was going on. The basic rationale was the allotment of land to tribal citizens. The tribal lands were being broken up and acreage was awarded to enrolled citizens based on the number of people in a family. The idea was to make them small landowners in the image of their white counterparts. Once this guiding principle was established specific criteria on eligibility had to be established. The primary one was residency. A person had to prove that they had resided within the borders of the particular Indian nation within a set time frame. This could vary from tribe to tribe. It was usually the period from the end of the Civil War to about 1900. This is where it gets tricky. Individual Indians were generally illiterate. They did not keep written records. Marriages were rather informal unions by American standards. For example, a white man might marry an Indian woman in 1865 and have a dozen children. There would be no official record of births in Oklahoma until well after statehood. Some of his offspring might stay within the boundaries of the Nation, but others, especially young men, might go where there was work, say in Texas or Arkansas or Missouri. There they might marry and raise families of their own. Then they would hear about the enrollment process and the lands being offered and return to apply. Guess what happened? They would be denied citizenship because they had been non-residents. To compound matters for modern researchers the census records in the states they had moved to would probably list them as White. So, from our vantage point, you have a white family coming into the Cherokee Nation from Texas in 1895 and applying for citizenship based on a purported Indian mother or grandmother. Is this what happened to Warren’s ancestors? I don’t know, but I am aware of it happening to others.
Honestly, the question of Warren’s ancestry is rather immaterial to the question of if what Trump said was racist or not. What he said would be no more acceptable if his target had been someone who was 100% Cherokee or claimed no Cherokee ancestry at all. Meanwhile, we’re letting Trump get away with his racist slur because we’re helping legitimize it by debating Warren’s ancestry.
Let’s keep the Warren ancestry debate for the next time Warren brings it up, rather than every time Trump brings it up.