Weird, Conservatives Aren't Buying Elizabeth Warren's DNA Test Even a Little Bit

Elizabeth Warren released the results of a DNA test showing she does, in fact, have some Native American ancestry. As m’colleague Katherine pointed out this morning, this was not a good idea.

Presumably, this was directed at the right-wing fever swamp, with Donald Trump as their swampy king, which has for years been pursuing the “Pocahontas” attack.

So how’s this being received among the conservative commentator class? Let’s have a look.

Brit Hume, Fox News host:

Joel Pollak, Breitbart:

This is a reference to the fact that the genetic researcher who conducted the genetic analysis found Warren could be as little as 1/1024th Native American if her Native ancestor was ten generations back; if they were six generations back she would be 1/32nd Native American, according to the Boston Globe.

The Blaze, a failing conservative website:

Fox Business:

Ben Shapiro, smol racist logic pupper:

(Ben has been on a real tear about Warren today; there are many many more, if you feel like pouring bleach onto your brain.)

James Woods, who was good in Hercules:

Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter, Dorian Grey and Dorian Grey’s portrait respectively:

Dana Loesch, gunfucker:

Erick Erickson, infected bowel:

Michelle Malkin, too boring to insult:

Benny Johnson, racist plagiarist:

Jim Hoft, the “dumbest man on the internet,” retweeting some very normal accounts like RedPillJew:

This is just a small sample. It is safe to say they are not sold.

None of these people, or their regular readers, were ever going to vote for anyone but Trump in 2020 anyway. Warren does not need to, nor should she seek to, convince these people of anything. She couldn’t if she tried. So who was this aimed at? People who might have a slim chance of supporting her probably didn’t even know about this, let alone care.

Remember how Donald Trump repeatedly accused President Obama of being born in Kenya, and then Obama produced his birth certificate to definitively put the issue to bed, and Trump went on to win the presidency? Yeah. That.

You cannot fact-check your way to beating Trump. This doesn’t mean facts don’t matter, but it does mean that you can’t beat someone who is resolutely committed to lies with more facts. We’ve already seen that doesn’t work. Hillary Clinton tried sending people to her fact-check website during one of the debates with Trump. She lost the election. (Yes, she won the popular vote, but it was Donald Fucking Trump; she ought to have crushed him if facts mattered even a little bit.) You have to win by convincing people you are more on their side. That’s all it is.

If Warren thought this would settle things—if she thought that right-wingers, and reporters who seek to convey “balance” by parroting the shit right-wingers care about, will stop asking about this—she was dead wrong.