Democratic presidential candidate and former Native American claimant Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) was hit with a surprise Friday morning, when she was accused during a radio interview of being "the original Rachel Dolezal" — the white NAACP chapter president who falsely posed as an African American for years before being exposed.

What are the details?

Warren appeared in studio for "The Breakfast Club" with host Charlamagne tha God on New York's WWPR-FM, to discuss the planks of her campaign platform such as supporting reparations for slavery and making tons of things "free" like college.

At first, the dialogue seemed to be going well. The interviewers indulged Warren by egging on the White House hopeful about her proposals for raising taxes, breaking up businesses and trusting Washington bureaucrats to take over more of the U.S. economy.

But around the midway mark (19:55), the discussion took a turn when host Charlamagne tha God said, "I want to clear up some stuff, because, you know, there's a lot of criticism that's said about you so I want to give you the opportunity to speak on these things.

"The Native American thing," he began, "Do you regret taking the DNA test?"

"Look, I can't go back," Warren responded, before co-host DJ Envy suggested they remind listeners that "people were very upset" after finding out that the senator from Massachusetts turned out to have almost no Native American ancestry after decades of claiming otherwise.

Warren went on to admit she shouldn't have made the claim, before Charlamagne pressed, "How long did you hold on to that? Because there were some reports that said you were Native American on your Texas bar license and that you said you were Native American on some documents when you were a professor at Harvard. Like, why'd you do that?"

"So, it's what I believe," the Democrat responded, adding that it's what she had been told by her parents.

"When did you find out you weren't?" Charlamagne pushed further.

Warren dodged the question, replying, "I'm not a person of color, I'm not a citizen of a tribe, and tribal citizenship is an important distinction and not something I am. So..."

Charlamagne then asked, "Were there any benefits to that?"

After Warren denied she received any favor from claiming to be Native American, the host said, "You're kind of like the original Rachel Dolezal a little bit."

Never losing eye contact, Charlamagne reminded the audience, "Rachel Dolezal, white woman pretending to be black."

Anything else?

Warren got a brief reprieve from the heat before Charlamagne resumed his questioning (26:23) over the senator's past as a registered Republican, which Warren danced around.



By then, Charlamagne was done calling the candidate "Liz," as he had earlier. "You had a lot of confusion back in the day, Ms. Warren," the host told her. "You thought you were Native American, you thought you were Republican. When did you get on the right track?"

