2020 Presidential Election

Trump’s One Elizabeth Warren Joke Is Already Getting Old

Has the president become a one-trick pony?
Elizabeth Warren speaks at her campaign headquarters in Dorchester.
By Hadley Green/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

Of the many potential Democrats running against Donald Trump in 2020, Republican insiders seem to fear Elizabeth Warren the least. “There’s a lot of Hillary Clinton in her,” a veteran D.C. operative told Hive contributor David Drucker last month. “She’s elitist and doesn’t appear very nimble. It would be hard for her to expand her base or reach directly into Trump’s base.” The president himself seemed to agree, telling reporters when Warren announced her exploratory committee this week, “I hope she does well. I’d love to run against her.” But where his Republican allies see opportunity in the qualities they believe could alienate American voters—Warren’s status as a so-called “hypocrite professor” who rakes in cash while railing against income inequality, for one—Trump has zeroed in on Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry, tweeting a meme to that effect just three days into her nascent presidential campaign:

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Perhaps because it seems to have gotten under Warren’s skin, Trump has taken a shine to this particular pain point. “She did very badly in proving that she was of Indian heritage,” he told reporters after his repeated “Pocahontas” jabs compelled the Massachusetts senator to take a DNA test. “That didn’t work out too well. I think you have more than she does, and maybe I do, too, and I have nothing. So we’ll see how she does.” Nearly all of his tweets about Warren, dating from the 2016 election, refer either to her relationship with Clinton (“who she always hated”), or the issue of her claimed Native American ancestry. Trump’s penchant for catchy nicknames served him well in 2016, when he convinced Republican voters to abandon “Lyin’” Ted Cruz, “Little” Marco Rubio, and “Low-Energy” Jeb Bush, and dulled moderate enthusiasm for his opponent “Crooked Hillary” in the general election. With “Pocahontas,” he’s likely hoping to recapture some of the old magic, while simultaneously redefining Warren’s progressivism as adulterated by divisive cultural issues like affirmative action, rather than more populist principles like a living wage. (Trump claims Warren used her ancestry to win preferential treatment at Harvard—a charge she denies.)

Whether the “Pocahontas” line of attack will continue to yield returns for Trump as the 2020 race progresses, however, is an open question. The ostensible catastrophe of the DNA test, which appears to have damaged Warren’s standing among her own base and drew condemnations from the Cherokee Nation, was due more to Warren’s misguided response than Trump’s rhetorical genius. In the weeks since, she appears to have (rightly) concluded that stooping to Trump’s level gives him the upper hand. “We’re now in the 13th day of the shutdown, we have hundreds of thousands of federal employees not getting their paychecks and work that’s not being done all around this country,” she told reporters when asked to respond to the president’s Thursday tweet. “Those are the issues we need to worry about, and that’s where we need to focus.”

There’s also some question as to whether the nickname will deter a significant swath of voters. Unlike his label for Clinton, which illuminated underlying ethical questions, Trump’s moniker for Warren is a glancing blow. Sure, it harkens back to an awkward faux pas, but not one that will likely repel the majority of the electorate. It’s possible, too, that Trump’s choice to double down on the slur could prod independents who’ve tired of Trump in Warren’s direction. Her political stances—which favor financial regulation, consumer safety, more equal economic opportunity, and fighting corruption—directly counter Trump’s actions while in office, and given the chance, could pose a potent alternative leading into 2020.

Trump and his allies, however, seem to be betting that the culture wars will win the day once again. Failing that, the president has already begun testing another attack: when asked if he thought Warren believed she could win, he inexplicably told reporters: “Well, I don’t know, you’d have to ask her psychiatrist.”

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