The real reason Elizabeth Warren chose right now to hit Donald Trump
Senator Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test which demonstrates that she really is part Native American, after Donald Trump spent the past couple years claiming otherwise, and hurling racial slurs at her for it. Everyone knows why she’s doing this. The big question is why she’s choosing to do this right now, at this particular point on the calendar.
Elizabeth Warren is, rather obviously, setting herself up for a potential run for president in 2020. So are a number of other Democrats. She was always going to need to make these false accusations about her ancestry go away, so that it couldn’t be turned into a phony yet ratings-friendly scandal during the 2020 election. But she could easy have released these results a month from now, or six months from now. Instead she’s made a point of releasing them right now, just three weeks before the midterm elections.
I believe Warren’s specific timing has nothing to do with her presidential ambitions, and is instead aimed at something different. This summer Donald Trump offered to donate a million dollars to charity if Warren was willing to take a DNA test. Now that she’s done so, she’s demanding that he make good on it. In response, Trump insisted to reporters today that he never made such an offer. There’s a reason for that.
Donald Trump is in deep financial debt to lenders around the world, and he’s so cash-poor he’s resorting to small antics like overcharging the Secret Service for golf cart rentals. The last thing he wants to do is cough up a million dollars in cash. We saw this when he pledged a million dollars to Hurricane Harvey relief, and then had to be reluctantly dragged into doing it. As it stands, Trump probably can’t even come up with a million dollars cash before the midterm elections. So now the Democrats can use his failure to make the donation as a basis for attacking him heading into November 6th.
When Trump is playing defense, he can’t focus on offense. Yes, Elizabeth Warren was going to have to take a DNA test in order to run for president. Yes, she’s probably going to run for president. But her decision to release the results right now is a different matter. She may have just increased the odds of her party taking control of the House and Senate. Unlike a lot of “progressive” politicians, Warren is politically savvy and knows how to tilt the playing field.
