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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