Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said she "can't go back"in an interview airing Saturday when asked if she made a mistake releasing a DNA test purporting to prove her longtime claims of Native American ancestry.
Warren sat down for an interview on CNN's "The Axe Files" with David Axelrod, a CNN analyst and former Obama White House adviser. During the interview, she was asked about the controversy that has plagued her political career since 2012.
"The question I have never understood is why. Why did you in 1986 fill out on your law license or something? Why did you check those boxes, because obviously that's a very small part of your lineage? 1/32nd or something, so why did you do it?" Axelrod asked.
Warren began by talking about her parents and how she learned about her family's history as a child along with her older siblings. She then said that since she loved her family, she "sometimes identified as Native American," adding that it had nothing to do with any of her jobs that she never got.
"Even so, I shouldn't have done it. I'm not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe, but what I try to do is to be a good friend to Native Americans and that's why for example, I have a housing bill that fully funds housing on tribal reservations," Warren said.
Asked if releasing a DNA test and slickly produced video last year to blunt President Donald Trump's "Pocahontas" attacks was a "mistake," Warren didn't directly answer.
"I can't go back," she said. "All I can do is look forward."
Warren has apologized repeatedly for identifying in the past as Native American and apologized to the Cherokee Nation for releasing the test. Liberals at the time criticized her for legitimizing race science with the stunt.
The Washington Free Beacon published a timeline early last month detailing the sequence of events in Warren's saga of claims to Native American ancestry.