Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., couldn’t possibly have thought this week would end with her apologizing to the Cherokee Nation. But at the rate things are going, that’s exactly what she’ll have to do to get out of the mess that she has created for herself.

The Massachusetts senator kicked off Monday by sharing the results of a DNA test she and her fans in the news media say vindicates her from criticisms that she tried to benefit undeservedly from claiming minority status when she taught at Harvard Law School. Warren has claimed for years that she is of Cherokee Indian descent.

However, the DNA report shows that Warren is maybe six or 10 generations removed from having any ties to the Native American ancestry, if she has any at all. Depending on whether her great-great-great-great-grandmother was indeed a Native American, which neither the report nor Warren can say, the senator would be 1/64th Native American. But she could just as easily be 1/1,024th Native American. Then there’s the problem that the study wasn’t based on Native American DNA from within the United States, but on Mexican, Peruvian, and Colombian DNA.

In other words, Warren’s claim to Cherokee heritage is, uh, thin, to put it politely. It’s so thin, in fact, that the actual Cherokee Nation released a statement Monday, nuking Warren’s supposedly vindicating report from orbit.

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation,” said Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr.

His statement added, “Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Sen. Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

And to think that this day began with Warren attempting to dunk on President Trump with the results of her DNA test.

The senator's report is a massive self-own. By putting numbers to her ancestral claims, and by revealing just how thin her ties to the Cherokee Nation really are, the senator has shined a blinding spotlight on the absurdity of a mess that is 100 percent of her own making. There is no scenario where the fact that she was referred to as Harvard Law School's " first woman of color” or the fact that she described herself as a " minority" for several years on a law professors' listing do not feel like cruel jokes, especially considering that the best she can say is that she is maybe — maybe! — 1/64th Native American.

The test retroactively raises serious questions about why Warren’s two former employers, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, listed her as "Native American" on federal forms. The report also casts well-deserved doubt on the senator’s oft-repeated claim that her parents were forced to elope because her supposedly Cherokee mother was ostracized by her father's family.

"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," Warren told Fox News as recently as 2017. I bet.

But now Warren has a much bigger dilemma on her hands. The Cherokee Nation itself is crying foul in response to her DNA test, leaving her with no good options.

Does Warren drop the matter altogether and admit error, seeking forgiveness from a marginalized people? If she does, she will hand Trump a major victory that he will absolutely lord over her for years to come. Or does Warren go to war with the Cherokee Nation, demanding they apologize to her? That’ll be a great look; a white U.S. senator telling the remains of a Native American tribe what it really means to be a Cherokee.

Warren could've avoided all of this had she responded to the DNA test simply by saying, “I'm sorry. My family lore led me to believe I was closer to the Cherokee Nation than I really am. I regret the judgment, etc.” But Warren wanted so badly to put a point up on the board against the president.

She began this week probably thinking she would win the love and approval of the Democratic base. Warren will most likely end this week asking forgiveness from the Cherokee Nation. Whoever advised her to tout the DNA test should be out of a job. Immediately.