President Donald Trump on Thursday said that if he ends up debating Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) in one of the 2020 presidential election debates, he would offer to donate $1 million to her favorite charity should she take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage.
Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Great Falls, Montana when he made the comment about Warren, who he has often called "Pocahontas" in reference to her unsubstantiated claim to Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage.
Trump said the media would eventually endorse his candidacy because without him they would go out of business. He then went on to mock some of the potential 2020 Democratic candidates, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), former Vice President Joe Biden, and Warren.
"She of the great tribal heritage. What tribe is it? Uh let me think about that one," Trump said, mocking Warren. "Meantime, she's based her life on being a minority ... Now even the liberals are saying, 'Take a test. Take a test.'"
He said that in a hypothetical 2020 debate between him and Warren, he would offer to donate $1 million to her favorite charity if she agreed to take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage.
"I’m going to get one of those little kits and in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she’s of Indian heritage — because her mother said she has high cheekbones – that’s her only evidence, that her mother said she has high cheekbones," Trump continued. "We will take that little kit, we have to do it gently because we’re in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle."
"And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian," Trump said. "And let's see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no, but we will hold that for the debates."
Trump then joked with the crowd and told them to keep his offer a secret until the debates.
Warren, citing family lore, has routinely insisted she has Native American ancestry despite a lack of documentation or other evidence to prove that she is in fact a descendant.