A potential political rival to Elizabeth Warren has challenged the incumbent U.S. senator on social media to take a simple DNA test.
V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., is describing it as the real Indian vs. the fake Indian challenge.
The self-described email inventor, MIT graduate, scientist/entrepreneur, and alternative/holistic healthcare advocate, Ayyadurai is seeking the GOP nomination in Massachusetts to run against Democrat Warren in 2018.
Apparently the only declared candidate so far, Shiva was briefly married to actress/comedienne Fran Drescher.
Ayyadurai wants Warren, a vocal President Trump foe, to submit her saliva to a commercial testing firm, and he evidently plans to do the same. Ayyadurai legally immigrated to America from India at age 7 in 1970 with his parents and refers to himself as an All-American Indian.
President Trump has mocked Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” over prior claims of Native American heritage, which Warren previously insisted was part of her family folklore.
Warren critics originally gave her the derisive “Fauxcahontas” (rather than Pocahontas) nickname, which is a play on words in a callback to the Massachusetts election controversy about five years ago.
In running against then-Senator Scott Brown in 2012, Elizabeth Warren maintained that she was 1/32 Cherokee, but no formal corroboration of this claim’s validity has ever emerged. There are allegations that Warren nonetheless used her “minority” status to obtain important law teaching positions at several Ivy League universities under affirmative action.
Last year, a prominent Native American writer referred to Warren as a “Pretendian.” In 2012, Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes asserted that no authentication existed for Warren’s purported Native American heritage.
I’m challenging @SenWarren to the Real Indian vs #FakeIndian DNA TEST??. pic.twitter.com/z2lbYXPlfe
— Dr.SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD. Inventor of Email (@va_shiva) May 21, 2017
In June 2016, then-candidate Trump said at a Tampa rally that he would apologize to Pocahontas for the reference “because Pocahontas is insulted by the statement,” MSNBC reported at the time. The future president also told ex-Fox News Channel anchor Bill O’Reilly that “I do regret calling [Warren] Pocahontas because I think it’s a tremendous insult to Pocahontas. So, Pocahontas, I would like to apologize to you,” CNS News detailed .
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In May 2012, The Atlantic , a liberal publication, declared in a detailed story that based on genealogical evidence, Warren was not eligible for membership in one of any three Cherokee tribes recognized by the U.S. government, but also asserted that she never benefited in her professional career from claiming that heritage.
In March, a Brown University professor of Native American descent called out Elizabeth Warren for allegedly being “complicit in racism” for her apparent silence on discrimination against Native Americans, the Social Memo recalled .
Although Massachusetts has a Republican governor, its entire congressional delegation is Democrat. As such, any challenger to Elizabeth Warren has a difficult task ahead, which the Lowell Sun noted in an endorsement of Shiva Ayyadurai for U.S. Senate.
“Yes, Ayyadurai has political mountains to climb, as high as the Himalayan range that runs through his native land. Warren has almost $6 million at her campaign disposal, while Ayyadurai said he’d probably be the main funding source of his campaign. But sometimes an idea whose time has arrived can overcome overwhelming odds.”
According to most political observers, Elizabeth Warren is likely seeking the Democrat nomination for president in 2020 to run against Donald Trump provided she wins reelection 2018.
Do you think that Sen. Elizabeth Warren will go along with Shiva Ayyadurai’s challenge to take a DNA test to prove she is part Indian?
[Featured Image by Steven Senne/AP Images]