US President Donald Trump returned to his own kind of code talking on Monday by deriding US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, as “Pocahontas” at a White House event honoring Native American war heroes.
“You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said as he honored three Navajo code talkers from World War II.
Then he added, without naming Warren: “We have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas. But you know what, I like you.”
Photo: Reuters
Trump deployed that nickname for the Massachusetts senator repeatedly during last year’s presidential campaign and again as recently as a Nov. 3 tweet.
Native American leaders have called Trump’s past attacks on Warren offensive and distasteful. Some Democrats have called the nickname racist.
Trump made the comment as he stood near a portrait of former US president Andrew Jackson, which he hung in the Oval Office in January.
Trump admires the seventh president’s populism, but Jackson is also known for signing the Indian Removal Act of 1830, in which the Cherokee Nation was removed from its lands in what is now known as the “Trail of Tears.”
The Navajo Nation suggested Trump’s remark on Monday was an example of “cultural insensitivity” and resolved to stay out of the “ongoing feud between the senator and President Trump.”
“All tribal nations still battle insensitive references to our people. The prejudice that Native American people face is an unfortunate historical legacy,” Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye said in a statement.
The Navajo Nation remains honored by the White House recognition of the code talkers, he said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about criticism of Trump’s remarks, said a racial slur “was certainly not the president’s intent.”
Those in the Oval Office for Monday’s event gave no visible reaction to Trump’s “Pocahontas” comments, but Warren and other Democrats were quick to respond.
“This was supposed to be an event to honor heroes, people who put it all on the line for our country, who, because of their incredible work, saved the lives of countless Americans and our allies,” Warren said in an interview on MSNBC. “It is deeply unfortunate that the president of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur.”
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