Forget the cheap shots and the #Faucahontas jokes, and ask yourself: Why does Liz Warren keep lying?

Why, after the waste of way too many hours by genealogists and journalists proving that Elizabeth Warren has no Native American heritage — why does she keep telling the same lies?

Yesterday, in a last-second, surprise speech to the National Congress of American Indians, she repeated the bogus story yet again: “My mother’s family was part Native American. And my daddy’s parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped.”

Amazingly, except for the date nothing in that statement can withstand scrutiny. No, her mother’s family is not Native American. No, her grandparents were not the racists she claims they were, forcing their son to marry in secret. The wedding of Pauline Reed and Donald Herring (Warren’s parents) was conducted by a prominent Methodist minister (he helped found Southern Methodist University) and announced with great fanfare in the local paper.

And most important of all, no — Liz Warren’s family never suffered a single setback or even a moment of discrimination due to family lore about their heritage. Liz Warren never lived one minute of her life as a minority. The entire premise of her claim is ludicrous on its face — with or without the high cheekbones.

So why the hell did she list herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools directory?

“Here we are again,” Twila Barnes said when I spoke to her yesterday. Barnes is a Cherokee Indian and genealogist who runs the website PollysGranddaughter.com — named after three Cherokee ancestors all named Polly (including my favorite, “Polly Tadpole”). More than any other person, her research helped debunk Warren’s ancestry claims when the story first broke in 2012.

“There’s just nothing there,” Barnes said. “There is no Native American ancestry on her mother’s side at all. On her mother’s mother’s side, a newspaper article referred to her grandpa as ‘a white man’ who shot an ‘Indian.’ ”

“As for the elopement, if the marriage was viewed as such a bad thing [for being mixed race], why did they rush home from the next town over to celebrate?”

None of this is news to Warren observers or, presumably, to Warren herself. So why is she flogging this false story yet again? Does she think it’s smart politics? Her opponents certainly like it:

“Elizabeth Warren’s speech today distracts from an issue she has never addressed: Did she claim to be a member of a Native American tribe in order to obtain preferential consideration for employment?” asks John Kingston, one of three GOP candidates for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts this year. “She has never answered that question beyond a reasonable doubt, and she didn’t answer it today.”

Another Republican in the race, state Sen. Geoff Diehl, weighed in, too: “This is another media stunt by Warren to gain national exposure for her presidential run. It doesn’t excuse her for wrongfully claiming minority status.”

Her opponents love this issue. So the political upside is — what? That she fights? Even when she’s wrong? Hey, I know a certain Republican president who does the same thing …

As much as Warren fans might hate to hear it, she’s sounding awfully Trumpian. Making claims contrary to facts, refusing to back down, attacking her critics as haters? How long before Liz dons a #FakeNews T-shirt? (Or for the full-Trump effect, a buckskin dress.)

Warren concluded her speech with an attack on Trump: “It is deeply offensive that this president keeps a portrait of Andrew Jackson hanging in the Oval Office, honoring a man who did his best to wipe out Native people,” Warren said.

It’s also highly ironic given that there is some evidence to suggest one of Warren’s ancestors may have helped round up Indians for the “Trail of Tears” forced march. And for Brian Kilmeade, Fox News anchor and author of “Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans,” it’s highly outrageous:

“Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR — they all looked up to Jackson. President Truman kept a figurine of Jackson on his desk,” Kilmeade told me yesterday. “If Liz Warren, a professor with a questionable background, feels she’s made more of an impact on America, she’s delusional.”

She’s something all right. And whatever it is — it’s not Cherokee.

Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. His daily podcast is available at www.michaelgraham.com.