“if you support Native American causes, then it’s really hard to say that you can support Elizabeth Warren”
My appearance on the Jeff Kuhner Report: “I don’t think it necessarily ends her career, her presidential hopes, but I do think it has significantly damaged them.”
Over the years, I have given dozens of interviews about Elizabeth Warren’s Native American deception.
I appeared on October 18, 2018, on the Jeff Kuhner show on WRKO, Boston’s leading talk radio station. (Audio at bottom of post.)
(pats himself on his back) This was one of my best interviews on the topic, 15 minutes of summing up years of research and writing.
If you liked my 3-minutes of fame on Tucker Carlson Tonight, you’ll love these 15 minutes.
Here is the key excerpt:
Kuhner: “Okay my friends, you are in store for one treat. It is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce to all of you, I have been reading his stuff now for a long time, he’s got one of the best blogs in the country, Legal Insurrection dot com….”
Okay, that’s it. The rest is about Elizabeth Warren.
Kuhner: Why will she not apologize for her DNA test? It’s clearly backfiring, even Democrats are criticizing her, even the media is attacking her, yet she refuses to apologize. Why?
Jacobson: To me, the issue is not whether she apologizes only for the DNA test, it’s why she refuses to apologize for falsely appropriating Native American identity when she was a law professor. I think that’s the deeper issue. The DNA is kind of the tail on the dog. It’s coming now because she’s trying to dig herself out of the hole she dug, but the real question is why in her late 30s, did she all of the sudden decide to self-identify as Native American, self-identify exclusively for a purpose that would assist her career…. Why did she do in the one place that would essentially juice her career? ….
Why would she do that? And I think everybody knows why she that, because that would be a career enhancement. In an age, whether you agree with it or not, but in an age where there is strong support for affirmative action in academia, where there is emphasis on diversity, things like that, she essentially gave herself a leg up, and I think that’s really the problem. Everything has emanated from that, and for the last six years … she has been deflecting, and trying to excuse it. So really, to me, the question is why hasn’t she apologized to Native Americans for appropriating their identity. This last DNA thing is really the trail end of it.
***
Kuhner: … What do you say to the Boston Globe’s argument [that Warren never benefited from identifying as Native American]?
Jacobson: Well, there’s two responses to that. The first one is, we don’t know what records they’ve looked at. They did list some of them, they didn’t list all of them. It does not appear here, from the article, they were given access to her complete hiring file at Harvard Law School. And that’s where there might be a reflection …. You’d really need that complete Harvard Law School hiring file …. The question is, why did people at Harvard reach out to her, why did they recruit her, why was she brought into the system, the faculty meeting is the end of it….
The more important point is, let’s say she did not actually get a benefit. Let’s say The Boston Globe, although it did not have access to all the documents, is correct. Does it really matter politically? Because the fact of the matter is she tried to benefit. So she tried to claim an identity that she was not entitled to claim, that would have in the normal course of things, in the late 80s, in the early 90s, assisted her in giving her a leg up. To me, the fact that she tried it is the problem. Whether or not it benefited her, people can speculate on. Until we get those files, which we probably never will, we can’t say for sure. And that to me is the real problem here, it’s the attempt and the use of somebody else’s identity, Native American identity, that she had no right to claim….”
At 7:15 in the audio I told about a bit of my wife’s family lore, and how it could have allowed her to claim minority status. But she didn’t.
Jacobson: One example that I’ll give you … is my wife’s family lore is that they are descendents of the Jews who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. We actually have some circumstantial support for that. Her grandparents and her family history on her father’s side is from an area of Turkey where a lot of Jews fled to. Her father grew up speaking Ladino at home. So we have some supporting evidence. But she would never think to check the box of Hispanic or Latino, which under EEOC guidelines she would be entitled to do because she’s of Spanish, arguably, of Spanish heritage.
And it’s the same thing with Elizabeth Warren, that maybe there was this family lore. Maybe it’s something that people spoke about. But she had no evidence of it. She had no reason, she never lived as a Native American. And that’s really the thing.
She never self-identified as Native American except for career purposes later in life. She wasn’t raised as a Native American. I would completely excuse her if she was brought up mistakenly thinking she’s Native American, and she lived as a Native American, she associated with Native Americans, as a child she applied to college as a Native American, and then, if decades later somebody says, you know what, you’re wrong, I can excuse that. But that’s not her history. She did not live as a Native American. Until the last year, when she’s setting up to run for president, she’s never done anything for Native Americans….
***
Kuhner: …. Let me play devil’s advocate. Okay, so what? Like in the end, who cares? What liberals will say in this state, well look, she supports Medicare for all, she is for gun control, she’s pro choice, she wants open borders, she believes in amnesty, she wants to go after the 1 percent, she wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, I agree with her on all these issues, she’s a liberal, a staunch liberal, a progressive, okay, so what, she embellished that she was a Native American. Why does it matter, in your view?
Jacobson: I expect that many of her supporters will take that tact. And if they want to do it, at least do it honestly. Acknowledge that she fabricated this identity. Acknowledge she ripped off the identity of one of the most victimized peoples in recent history. Acknowledge all these things, and if you want to say that despite that I still want to support her, I understand that. People do that all the time. That’s why some people, a lot of people, will say with Donald Trump or some other politician, well yes, he does this, he does that, but I’m willing to look beyond those things.
People who are honest about it, and are willing to say that I understand that she committed this ethnic deception, I understand she refuses to apologize about it, I understand all those things but I’m going to vote for her anyway, I get that. But just be honest with it, that’s my point of view, don’t buy into this notion that somehow her family lore justified her doing it. Or this fractional percentage of DNA, that might show some ancestor in the distant past. And if you support Native American causes, then it’s really hard to say that you can support Elizabeth Warren….
All I’m interested in is getting the truth out there about what she did, and hopefully getting people to be honest about what she did, and not just gloss it over with a DNA test which is offensive to actual Native Americans and doesn’t prove anything anyway.
***
Kuhner: Where do you think Elizabeth Warren goes from here?….
Jacobson: … I think she just keeps pushing forward. One of the things I’ve learned about Elizabeth Warren, watching her political career since April 2012, is she just keeps pushing forward…. I expect her to act like this is no big deal…. I don’t think it necessarily ends her career, her presidential hopes, but I do think it has significantly damaged them.”
Here is the audio (click here if player doesn’t load).
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Comments
When I was a very young lad, before I joined the Cub Scouts, I was part of something similar called the “Indian Guides”. It was a relatively small group of perhaps exclusively white kids and their fathers (locally, about the same level of participation as the Cub Scouts, I’d guess). I don’t think any of us had any actual Native American background or affiliation — that wasn’t a requirement to join. It was just a group that supposedly taught kids about how the Indians lived and survived. All I remember about it is making a cool (using very cheap) leather vest by sewing (maybe “stitching” is a better word) together three or four pieces of leather. I loved making it, and then wearing it for weeks or months later.
And that is the extent of my Indian lore.
On the bright side, Professor, if she is elected there will be an entire department at IRS devoted full time to the “Jacobson problem”. So many will be assigned to the “JP” that it will probably drop the national unemployment by several percentage points.
Great stuff. God I hope Warren goes down in flames. That would be justice.
Okay, so she doesn’t give up and maybe her hopes win Democratic Party presidential nomination aren’t dead. But that is only because her competition consists of nothing but rogues even more toxic than she is. Trump will be gliding right back into the White House in 2020. There just isn’t enough money in the world to sell the Democrat cancer.
I really think Hillary will run again. At a minimum it would keep her from getting nailed for all of her various crimes at least until Nov 2020. It would be politically impossible to indict her if she is a candidate for President and she knows it.
Nothing about being a candidate for any office protects one from indictment, arrest or prosecution. Once President she’d be protected, but before that, she could be arrested for spitting on the sidewalk, same as anyone else.
I think the key word there was “politically”
The media would scream that this would be the Constitutional Crisis that ends the world.
IOW’s…same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Of course—Media, Democrats, and liberals are going to scream bloody murder no matter what. Not even total surrender will shut them up. Fortunately, this has nothing to do with politics. Politics—the politics which matters, the one which sets national policies, negotiates treaties, declares wars, etc—depends only on votes. As long as one isn’t counting on the vote of some unreliable flake like Susan Collins, Leftoid whining doesn’t matter.
If nothing else Warren proved herself too stupid to be President.
Remember. This whole DNA crap was released INTENTIONALLY by her. Nobody leaked it, threatened her, or even thought she’d actually taken a DNA test.
After carefully analyzing it, Warren actually thought that this HELPED her.
First, Professor, we all owe you a debt for the Liz Warren wiki. So thank you for that.
I agree with your arguments, and I am not a lawyer, but in the first argument of *why* she did it, you seem to be arguing about her motive, which is harder to prove. The fact that she never related with any Indians is damning. I get the timing angle. But the argument of why she promoted herself as Cherokee could be answered with a story of heightened pride of her background after talking to her grandmother AT THAT MOMENT, etc . . .
I also think her academic controversies are particularly damning, as they demonstrate her ineptness or lack of rigorous thinking to prove her thesis on bankruptcy and medical bills.
I find her professional work with big corporations against the little people (e.g. the electric company) damning as well.
But these last two points are not often raised. I know it was only a 15 minute show (I have not listened to the audio yet), but as a resent of Massachusetts, I’d love these to be raised in debates.
Yes, the Commonwealth will elect her again, but as a resident, I dont want to export her to Washington
I’m not sure what “Native American causes” are, but if they’re what I think they are, I’ll have to say no, thanks.
I’ve had no use for Indians since the Jamestown Massacre of 1622. That homicidal sneak attack did for Indians what Pearl Harbor did for Japan. Maybe worse—it set the pattern for US-Indian relations for the next three centuries. Going in whole hog with Britain in 1776 didn’t make things any better. The perpetual outrages and massacres, large and small, didn’t fizzle out until just before World War 1. That’s three centuries of utterly pointless pain and suffering. Sorry, I’m not nostalgic for that stuff. I figure Indians and Warren deserve each other. Put them both in a box—poke holes in the sides, so they can breathe—and let them both suffer, as long as they don’t plague anyone else.
I won’t vote for Warren in two weeks, not because she’s feuding with some Cherokees (or Cherokee wannabees), but because she’s an undisputed member of the Democrat Tribe, and I’m feuding with them.
No matter how she came by her “heritage” or what the percentage is or whether she socialized with other Native American professors; the hypocrisy or “chutzpah” of this debacle is that after gaining tenure at Harvard Law, she proceeded to UNCHECK the box on the next survey.This was a good deal for her and for Harvard Law; not so good for aspiring Native Americans.