President Trump said Thursday that if he were facing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during a debate, he would offer her $1 million to take a test to prove her Native American heritage.
“But let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas, I’ll do this,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Great Falls, Mont., referring to Warren by the racially charged nickname he gave her during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I promise you I’ll do this, you know those little kits they sell on television for $2? Learn your heritage,” Trump said.
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“I’m going to get one of those little kits and in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims she’s of Indian heritage — because her mother said she has high cheekbones, that’s her only evidence,” Trump continued.
“We will take that little kit, we have to do it gently because we’re in the “Me Too” generation, we have to be very gentle,” Trump said mocking the movement that seeks to expose sexual misconduct in media, entertainment and politics.
“We will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably 2 oz,” he said.
“And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, paid for by Trump, to your favorite charity if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian,” Trump said. “And we’ll see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no but we will hold it for the debates.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Warren as “Pocahontas,” most recently doing so at a campaign rally last month in Nevada.
During Thursday’s rally, the president said he wouldn’t apologize to Warren for using the term, but he would apologize to Pocahontas herself.
“Pocahontas, I apologize to you,” Trump said Thursday. “To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t,” he added, referring to Warren.
Warren fired back at Trump on Twitter, accusing him of obsessing over her “genes” while his administration conducts “DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order.”
“Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying,” she added.
Warren has acknowledged her past claims that she is of Native American heritage.
“Look, I do know. I know who I am. And never used it for anything. Never got any benefit from it anywhere,” Warren said earlier this year.
Updated at 8:03 p.m.