HELENA, Mont. (AP/WHDH) — In a freewheeling speech in Montana, President Donald Trump cycled through many of his favorite themes but repeatedly returned to vigorous campaign-year attacks on Democrats. He again referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as “Pocahontas” to ridicule her claims of Native American ancestry. Warren is among the Democrats considered a potential 2020 candidate. Trump said Thursday that he would give her a DNA test in the middle of a debate and say: “I’ll give you a million dollars for your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” Trump also went after U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, calling her a “low-IQ individual.” She has been calling for his impeachment for more than a year. Warren quickly responded on Twitter, writing: “Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying.” The Health and Human Services secretary says under 3,000 children are believed to have been separated from their parents. RELATED: Deadline to reunite immigrant families rapidly approaching A federal judge has ruled if children are younger than five, the must be reunited with their parents by July 10 and all other children by July 26.<doc-sep>President Donald Trump was publicly shamed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for focusing on making racist insults and challenges toward her instead of trying to repair the damage his policies have caused thousands of innocent migrant children. What prompted Warren to remark on Trump's seeming obsession with her genes? An attack by the president on Thursday, hitting the Democratic senator for her past claims of having Native American ancestry. "I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian. I have a feeling she will say no," Trump declared at a political rally in Great Falls, Montana, according to NBC News. Trump's next line revealed the underlying reason why he and his supporters resent Warren for claiming to be part-Native American: "She's based her life on being a minority!" The president also used his diatribe to take a swipe at the modern women's rights movement, name-dropping #MeToo in a way that implied the movement is about oversensitivity and ignoring that it is rooted in a backlash against sexual assault. "I'm gonna get one of those little kits. And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she's from Indian heritage, because her mother says she has high cheekbones..That's her only evidence, that her mother said she had high cheekbones," Trump started by saying. He then added, "We will take that little kit and say — but we have to do it gently, because we're in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces." Trump also took shots at other prospective Democratic presidential nominees in 2020, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. As former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told NBC News, this is part of the president's larger game plan to start attacking the Democratic candidates who are likely to run against him in 2020. "No president in history will ever have campaigned for a midterm like this one. The benefit for that is Kamala Harris, Booker, Gillibrand (and others) need 2019 to get their game ready for the national stage — they will now have to face Trump in open combat with all the chips in the middle," Bannon told NBC News. The references there were to Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Yet Trump's attacks on Warren's claim to having Native American ancestry — which frequently includes the use of the moniker "Pocahontas" as a slur against her — is different from other types of political mudslinging. Because he hasn't apologized for it or stopped using it, it is clearly in the subtext of all his attacks against her claim to Native American heritage, even when it isn't directly used. As such, it is appropriate to refer to this editorial by Molly Roberts of The Washington Post from November on why it's so offensive: Trump’s repeated reference to “Pocahontas” is racist first of all because it’s intended as a pejorative. Trump does not like Warren. It’s also racist because it seizes on a stereotypical Native American name to refer to an entire race — like calling an Asian man “Jackie Chan” or a black man “Frederick Douglass” (one of the president’s favorites). Worse yet, Trump is mushing together his tribes: At an event to honor Navajo heroes, he used the name of a Powhatan woman to disparage a senator who claimed Cherokee ancestry. She later added: But there’s no fact-checking necessary to know that two things can be bad at the same time. If Warren lied or even exaggerated, that’s wrong. Trump insulted the indigenous population by throwing around “Pocahontas” as a derogatory term for an imagined generic American Indian. That’s wrong, too. A better question than whether Warren is actually Native American is whether it matters in this debate — and it doesn’t. Warren could be all Cherokee, or 1/32nd Cherokee, or not Cherokee at all, and Trump would still be using the name of one Native American woman as a slur against all Native American people. The worst of Trump’s latest dust-up with Elizabeth Warren, in other words, has nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren at all. On a previous occasion in March when Trump challenged Warren to take a DNA test, the Massachusetts senator responded by appearing on Fox News and reiterating her version of the story. The appearance ended with her stating that the claim of Native American heritage is "part of who I am and no one's ever going to take that away." You know, my mom and dad were born and raised out in Oklahoma, and my daddy was in his teens when he fell in love with my mother. She was a beautiful girl who played the piano. And he was head over heels in love with her and wanted to marry her. And his family was bitterly opposed to that because she was part Native American. And eventually my parents eloped and they survived the Great Depression, they survived the Dust Bowl. They went through a lot of hard times. They raised three boys, my older brothers all of whom went off to the military. They raised me. They knocked around and it was tough but they hung together. They hung together for 63 years. I know who I am because of what my mother and my father told me, what my grandmother and my grandfather told me, what all my aunts and uncles told me and my brothers. It's a part of who I am and no one's ever going to take that away. When The Washington Post applied its Fact Checkers to the question of Warren's ancestry, it concluded that "there is no documented proof of Warren’s self-proclaimed, partial Native American heritage, which experts have noted is difficult to prove to begin with."<doc-sep>GREAT FALLS, Mont. — President Donald Trump launched a sustained attack Thursday on Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a leading potential 2020 rival — during a midterm campaign rally here. Reviving his "Pocahontas" nickname for the Massachusetts Democrat, Trump asked his audience to imagine him on a debate stage challenging Warren to submit to genetic testing to prove that she has Native American ancestors. "I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," he said. "I have a feeling she will say no." Trump added, "She's based her life on being a minority." He also said he would toss the genetic testing kit to her "gently because we're the #MeToo generation." "I'm gonna get one of those little kits," the president said. "And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she's from Indian heritage, because her mother says she has high cheekbones..That's her only evidence, that her mother said she had high cheekbones. "We will take that little kit and say — but we have to do it gently, because we're in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle," Trump continued, making a gesture of tossing something. "And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces." Warren punched back at Trump on twitter shortly after the conclusion of a raucous and wide-ranging more than hour long speech primarily intended to boost Republican Matt Rosendale's hopes of unseating Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in November. "Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order," Warren wrote. "Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you're destroying." It's the second time in a week that Trump has targeted Warren, and he is attacking perceived rivals for the presidency with increasing frequency and vigor during the run-up to November's congressional elections. On Thursday, he wondered why the media would even bother to cover Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden, whom Trump referred to as "Sleepy Joe." Steve Bannon, who served as campaign manager to Trump during the 2016 general election, told NBC News to expect Trump to continue to make sharp contrasts between himself and possible Democratic hopefuls — including Sens. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — while he campaigns for Republicans this fall. This year is being treated like Trump's first re-election effort. "No president in history will ever have campaigned for a midterm like this one," Bannon said. "The benefit for that is Kamala Harris, Booker, Gillibrand (and others) need 2019 to get their game ready for the national stage — they will now have to face Trump in open combat with all the chips in the middle." Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, during a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing in Washington on May 15, 2018. Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images And Trump's record gives him a lot to talk about, Bannon said. "Four percent growth, record low unemployment, China confronted and peace in Korea," Bannon said, inflating the actual U.S. economic growth numbers. "Bring 'Fauxohantas' and show me what you got." In 2012, when the issue of her heritage was raised in her first Senate race, Warren told National Public Radio that she based the assertion on family lore. "I am very proud of my heritage," she said. "These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mamaw and my papaw. This is our lives. And I'm very proud of it." Trump has repeatedly gone after Warren's heritage over the course of the last three years, especially when he's trying to rally his political base. He told the NRA last year that "it may be Pocahontas" who wins the Democratic nomination in 2020. "She is not big on the NRA." Trump's speech here wasn't all about 2020. He also went on an extended rant against Tester, for whom he has developed a particular personal distaste over Tester's successful effort to derail the nomination of Ronny Jackson to head the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year. Trump hit Tester for voting against Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, the GOP tax cuts and an effort to repeal Obamacare, among other presidential priorities. But it was Tester's treatment of Jackson that led to Trump to visit the state, he said. "I won Montana by so many points, I don't have to come here," Trump said, claiming Tester's issues with Jackson amounted to "shameless" attacks. Jackson withdrew his nomination because he lacked support not only from Democrats but also from key Senate Republicans after allegations of misconduct arose when the Senate's Veterans Affairs Committee began reviewing his nomination. As the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Tester led the charge in publicizing the allegations, which he said included drunkenness on the job and overprescribing medications. Even as Trump took aim at Tester, he also spoke of his own record of supporting reforms at the Veterans Administration — which include laws written by Tester. Tester took out ads in Montana papers in advance of the president's visit to highlight their areas of agreement. But no one who attended Thursday's rally would be confused about which candidate Trump supports. And veterans who attended the rally told NBC that they plan to vote for Rosendale. Dave Riddle, a 63-year-old Army veteran from Great Falls, said he voted for Tester in 2006 but not in 2012. Though he already planned to vote for the Republican nominee this time around, he said, he didn't appreciate Tester becoming the face of the opposition to Jackson's nomination. "I wish Tester would have just kept his mouth shut," Riddle said.<doc-sep>President Trump challenged Massachussets Sen. Elizabeth Warren, dubbed “Pocahontas” by the president, to a dare — asking her to take a DNA test to show that she is really Native American during a Thursday rally in Montana. WATCH: Trump took a stab at 2020 presidential Democrat hopefuls. “Are they going to cover Bernie? Hey, they’re gonna cover like sleepy Joe Biden? They’re going to cover Pocahontas? Think of it. Think of it. She of the great tribal heritage, what tribe is it? Uh, let me think about that one,” Trump said. He continued, “Pocahontas, they alway want me to apologize for saying it. And I hereby, no, I want to apologize. I’ll apologize tonight. Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize. To you, I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize. That name is causing her problems.” Trump went on to say that liberals don’t want her to take the test, but then promised a challenge. “We will say, ‘I will give you $1 million to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you are an Indian,'” Trump dared. Warren responded the president’s comments, deflecting to immigration policy instead of responding directly to the president’s challenge. Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) July 5, 2018 Update: This post was updated to include Sen. Warren’s response to the president. Follow Julia Nista on Twitter Send tips to: jnista@dailycaller.com<doc-sep>
BOSTON (CBS/AP) – In a freewheeling speech in Montana, Trump cycled through many of his favorite themes but repeatedly returned to vigorous campaign-year attacks on Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. He again referred to Warren of Massachusetts as “Pocahontas” to ridicule her claims of Native American ancestry. Warren is among the Democrats considered a potential 2020 candidate. Trump said Thursday that he would give her a DNA test in the middle of a debate and say: “I’ll give you a million dollars for your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” “We will take that little kit and say – but we have to do it gently. Because we’re in the #MeToo generation so we have to be very gentle – and we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm,” Trump said. Warren responded on Twitter, saying Trump should focus his attention on families who are being separated at the Mexican border. Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you're destroying. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) July 5, 2018 Trump also went after U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, calling her a “low-IQ individual.” She has been calling for his impeachment for more than a year. (© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)