CNN Confusion: Guest Accuses Trump of ‘Attacking’ Pocahontas

President Donald Trump on Monday sparked outrage from the usual suspects, who called his “Pocahontas” taunt of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) insensitive, inappropriate or even racist.

CNN commentator Angela Rye went a step further on Tuesday, arguing it was somehow a slur against the iconic Indian princess.

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“Pocahontas in and of itself is not a racial slur,” said Rye, a former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus. “The way in which President Trump continues to insult Elizabeth Warren by attacking someone who’s deemed as royalty to Indian Country, to native people in this country, is very, very frustrating. It’s disrespectful. I cannot imagine what the folks who were at the White House yesterday to be honored were feeling.”

Trump’s remarks came during a ceremony honoring Native American code talkers who passed crucial messages in their native languages during World Wars I and II. The president, off the cuff, mentioned Warren.

Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan and a member of the Pamunkey Tribe, married English planter John Rolfe in the early 17th century and has lived on in popular culture. Monday was not the first time Trump has invoked her name to tweak the Massachusetts senator, who claimed American Indian heritage during her academic career before running for the Senate.

Warren fired at Trump on Monday: “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.”

Monday was not the first time Trump has invoked Warren’s name to tweak the Massachusetts senator, who claimed American Indian heritage during her academic career before running for the Senate.

It seems fair game to question whether it is “presidential” to tag political opponents with nicknames or whether Monday’s setting — a ceremony that had nothing to do with Warren — was the appropriate time to raise the issue. But it is curious to interpret the taunt as some kind of attack on Pocahontas herself.

Trump supporters questioned why the media focus remains on Trump and not on Warren, who claimed Cherokee Indian heritage with no proof. The Republican National Committee blasted Warren and highlighted her questionable association with American Indians.

Warren’s claims came to light during her 2012 campaign for the Senate. She acknowledged that she had told the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University that she had Native American heritage but has insisted it played no role in her career advancement. She attributed the story to “family lore” but could offer no documentation backing it up.

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“She has never told the whole story as to why she listed herself as a Native American for nine years (perhaps because she used it to get ahead at law schools that were desperate for minority professor representation at the time),” the Republican National Committee said in a statement.

But Rye, the former Congressional Black Caucus staffer, was not just upset by Trump’s Warren taunt. She complained it was “inflammatory” and “insulting” to hold the ceremony for the code talkers in the Oval Office underneath a portrait of former President Andrew Jackson, who signed the Indian Removal Act.

“It’s not about name-calling in politics,” she said. “It’s about a bigot who sits next to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

(photo credit, homepage image: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore / Elizabeth Warren, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Edward Kimmel; photo credit, article image: Donald Trump at Aston, PA, CC BY 2.0, by Michael Vadon / Senator Elizabeth Warren…, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Edward Kimmel)