Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Get our free Inside Washington email
Democratic US senator Elizabeth Warren responded to the racial slur that President Donald Trump made toward her during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night in an interview with The Independent.
“I get under Donald Trump’s skin,” Warren said.
During his address, Trump spoke about the war in Ukraine, which he has sought to bring to an abrupt end. He has blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for supposedly starting the war despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin staged the invasion three years ago.
“Do you want to keep it going for another five years?” he asked the Congress on Tuesday evening. “You would say – Pocahontas says yes.”
Trump press secretary defends Musk’s clothes after Zelensky mocked for not wearing suit
Trump has repeatedly called Warren “Pocahontas” due to the fact that before she ran for Senate, Warren had claimed that she had Native American heritage, specifically Cherokee. In 2018, as she prepared to run for the Democratic nomination for president, she released DNA test showing that only 1/64 of her DNA came from a Native American population.
The Cherokee Nation later condemned Warren for releasing the test and she apologized.
Trump has continued to use the slur against Warren for years.
During the address, Warren clapped, smiled and shook her head as the president resurrected one of his favorite insults. Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has visted Ukraine in the past.
“I was applauding his statement that the United States has given aid to Ukraine,” she told The Independent. “He’s feeling the heat because he was delivering the speech on the day that he had stopped that same aid.”
The Trump administration this week paused aid to Ukraine as part of the fallout from the blow-up between Zelensky and Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Marco Rubio stresses the need to defend Ukraine during 2014 speech
“There’s a lot of blowback over what he’s doing in Ukraine, both here in Congress and across the country,” she said. “The American people understand Ukrainians have fought bravely to preserve their democracy, and they don’t like Donald Trump jumping into bed with Putin.”
Warren also criticized Trump supposedly putting a month-long pause on tariffs against Mexico and Canada for auto makers.
“There’s a rule that applies across the board, and then one at a time, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and a handful of other billionaire’s friends had an exception here and an exception there,” she told The Independent. “That means that the tariff that was originally announced applies to people who are not politically connected, but not really to anyone else.”
