President Donald Trump mocked Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday, hours after she trumpeted the results of a DNA analysis that concluded she was between 0.097 per cent and 0.156 per cent American Indian.

What's the percentage? One one-thousandth?' the president asked reporters during a short briefing in Warner Robins, Georgia, where he and first lady Melania Trump were surveying hurricane wreckage.

Asked if he owed Warren an apology for relentlessly ridiculing her claims of Cherokee lineage, he scoffed while Melania smiled broadly.

'No I don't. Absolutely. Do I owe her? — She owes the country an apology!' he snarked.

Moments later the Cherokee Nation heaped more cold water on what began as a front-page Boston Globe story calculated to help Warren rise above her greatest political vulnerability.

'Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage,' scolded Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr.

'Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong,' Hoskins said in a statement. '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.'

Trump had already jeered the DNA report, issued by a Stanford University geneticist who determined that a small amount of Warren's genome points to an American Indian ancestor.

Warren released a heavily produced video Monday along with a raft of related documents, strongly indicating she plans to run for president in 2020 – and that she considers herself vulnerable to Trump's frequent barbs on the topic.

The president pooh-poohed Warren's scripted public-relations rollout before he left the White House on Monday, swatting down her claim that during a July rally in Montana he had offered a $1 million charitable donation in the event she could prove her Cherokee heritage.

With first lady Melania Trump grinning, President Donald Trump joked Monday that before he would write a $1 million charity check acknowledging Sen. Elizabeth Warren's American Indian heritage, he would have to do the DNA testing himself

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, could be punching her ticket to the 2020 presidential sweepstakes with a report that confirms she has a small amount of American Indian blood

Trump said it's Warren, not him, who should apologize, after mocking the 'one one-thousandth' of the Democrat's blood line that might be traceable back to Cherokee Indians

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. 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. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage. — Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr.

Trump has taken pleasure in mocking Warren, who has claimed for decades that she's part American Indian based partly on her mother's observation of her 'high cheekbones'; on Monday he sniped 'Who cares?' when first asked about the DNA test results

Warren is an unapologetic liberal firebrand pressed from the Bernie Sanders mold, and Trump has chosen to make fun of her rather than meet her head-on — for now

'I didn't say that,' he insisted. 'You'd better read it again.'

Hours later in Georgia, Trump clarified that his seven-figure offer would only apply if he were to challenge her to provide a DNA sample in the context of a presidential debate — and oversee the testing himself.

'You mean if she gets the nomination? In a debate, where I was going to have her tested?' he asked.

'Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage,' scolded Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr.

'I'll only do it if I can test her personally, okay? That will not be something I enjoy doing either.'

Warren shoved back amid news reports that quickly turned in Trump's favor.

'We all know why @realDonaldTrump makes creepy physical threats about me, right? He’s scared,' she tweeted.

'He’s trying to do what he always does to women who scare him: call us names, attack us personally, shrink us down to feel better about himself. It may soothe his ego – but it won’t work.'

At the rally where he made his pledge in July, Trump told a laughing crowd that if he ever faced Warren on a debate stage he would toss a DNA kit at her and offer 'a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian.'

'We will take that little kit and say, but we have to do it gently, because we're in the MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle,' Trump said to laughter as he pantomimed an underhand throw.

'And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it – hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces.'

Warren named her charity on Monday, tweeting at Trump: 'Remember saying on 7/5 that you’d give $1M to a charity of my choice if my DNA showed Native American ancestry? I remember – and here's the verdict. Please send the check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.'

'I took this test and released the results for anyone who cares to see because I’ve got nothing to hide,' Warren said in a follow-up tweet.

'What are YOU hiding, @realDonaldTrump? Release your tax returns – or the Democratic-led House will do it for you soon enough. Tick-tock, Mr President.'

Warren fired back at the president after he said he wanted to test her DNA personally as a condition of making good on his $1 million pledge

Trump flatly denied saying he would pay $1 million to charity if Warren turned out to have American Indian blood, but the wording of his pledge leaves him plenty of wiggle room

Warren told Trump Monday on Twitter that she wanted him to pay up with a $1 million check to a women's charity, recalling his July boast that he would make a donation if she proved she was 'an Indian'

Carlos D. Bustamante, the scientist who analyzed Warren's DNA data, concluded that 'the vast majority' of her ancestry is European. But 'the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor,' he wrote.

That forefather – or foremother – could have been between six and 10 generations ago, meaning she could be as much as 1/64 Native American, or as little as 1/1024.

The lower end of that range corresponds to 0.097 per cent, which would make Warren less Indian than the average European-American.

A landmark study published in 2014 in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that European-American genomes are, on average, 0.18 per cent American Indian. The authors reported that they used 'conservative' estimates.

A landmark study published in 2014 in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that European-American genomes are, on average, 0.18 per cent 'Native American' (highlighting added by DailyMail.com for clarity)

Trump shrugged the whole thing off, concluding that he doesn't want to say anything that might deter Warren from challenging him in 2020.

WHAT'S IN ELIZABETH WARREN'S DNA? HOW WAS IT ANALYZED? Stanford geneticist Carols Bustamante analyzed data from a laboratory that sequenced Elizabeth Warren's DNA and compared it with samples from different regions of the world. Bustamante used a set of 185 known genetic samples – 99 people from Utah who are largely European-Americans and 86 others from Great Britain who were also ethnically European. He found that Warren is at least 95 per cent of Warren's DNA corresponds to European ancestry, but there were 5 DNA segments that are 'Native American in origin.' The sizes of those portions of her genome suggest that they date back to somewhere betwen six and 10 generations in Warren's family tree. That would mean she is between 1/64 and 1/1,024 American Indian. Warren's DNA also tested as more Native American than the samples from Utah and the UK. Most American Indian tribes discourage their members from participating in commercial DNA databases out of fear that it would be used to exploit them. So the 'Native American reference' samples Bustamante relied on belonged to people who were from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Some American Indian populations that entered North America via a land bridge in modern-day Alaska settled in the Great Plains, while others migrated to what is now Central and South America. Archaeology and DNA samples recovered from grave sites dating back many millennia have established genetic ties among a wide variety of those populations. Advertisement

'I hope she's running for president because I think she'd be very easy. I hope that she is running. I do not think she'd be difficult at all,' he said.

'She'll destroy the country. She'll make our country into Venezuela. What that being said, I don't want to say bad things about her because I hope she would be one of the people that would get through the process. It's going to be a long process for the Democrats.'

Former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina tweeted his amazement that Warren would release her report '22 days before a crucial election where we MUST win house and senate to save America.'

'[W]hy did @SenWarren have to do her announcement now? Why can’t Dems ever stay focused???' he asked.

Trump's well-documented $1 million bounty may have a rhetorical loophole: requiring Warren to prove she's 'an Indian' before he writes a check. Since she's not enrolled with a tribe, she doesn't legally qualify.

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issues official Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood, which most tribes require for membership. The certificates identify what specific percentage of a person's ancestry can be traced back to a Native American population.

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma requires a minimum of 1/4 Indian blood for membership. In order to qualify for a BIA higher education grant, students must also prove they are at least 1/4 native.

By that metric, many people identified as seminal American Indian figures wouldn't qualify. Cherokee Chief Little John, who led the tribe during the infamous Trail of Tears period, was just 1/8 Indian.

Whether Warren is 1.56 per cent American Indian or 0.097 per cent, it won't matter to her supporters. She possesses 12 times more Native American blood than a white person from Great Britain, Bustamante found, and 10 times more than a typical white person from Utah.

'We did find five segments of native American ancestry with very high confidence where we believe the error rate is less than one in 1,000,' he said in a video distributed by Warren's Senate campaign.

In July Trump said he would bring a tiny DNA testing kit with him if he ever squared off with Sen. Warren in a presidential debate, offering $1 to her favorite charity if it established that she was actually part American Indian

The president mocked Warren at the time, saying he would have to toss her the DNA kit 'very gently' because America is now 'in the MeToo generation'

In a scene filmed from both ends of a phone call presented as spontaneous, Warren tells Bustamante: 'The president likes to call my mom a liar. What do the facts say?'

He replies: 'The facts suggest that you absolutely have Native American ancestry in your pedigree.'

Warren's video doesn't explain how Bustamante reached that conclusion.

Teasing out ancestry from a DNA test relies heavily on pools of samples for comparison. And Indian tribes have historically urged their members not to add their genomes to commercial databases.

To get around what National Institutes of Health researcher Lawrence Brody told The Boston Globe was a 'sparse' American Indian DNA data set, Bustamante used samples 'from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia' as proxies, according to his report.

Warren narrates her family history in a video distributed Monday by her U>S. Senate re-election campaign; here she points to her mother (2nd left), who was brought up in eastern Oklahoma

The liberal firebrand recounts how her father and mother eloped because of suspicions about Indian blood in her past

Ann Rowsey White, a retail sales manager in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is identified in the video as both a Cherokee Nation citizen and Elizabeth Warren's cousin

Warren's attempt to flood the zone on Monday with positive information about her heritage and her career included testimonials from a long line of law school professors and deans from Harvard and elsewhere who say she was hired on merit – and considered a white woman at the time.

Warren did, however, list herself for 10 years as a minority in directories maintained by the Association of American Law Schools, beginning in 1986. That period of time stretched from the year before the University of Pennsylvania hired her to the year after Harvard Law School lured her away.

She told reporters in 2012, during her first Senate campaign, that 'I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am.'

Still, Trump has mocked her for years, calling her 'Pocahontas' and a 'fake Indian.'

The New England Historic Genealogical Society reported in 2012 that it had unearthed a 1894 document suggesting Warren's great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was at least partially Native American.

It turned out the society had found a family newsletter that described a marriage license application, but hadn't seen that document.

The conservative Breitbart News website later tracked down the marriage license and certificate and found that a column on both marked 'race' was left blank.

Stanford geneticist Carlos Bustamante found a small amount of Native American DNA in Warren's sample but acknowledged it could amount to just 1/512 or about 1/5 of 1 per cent

Warren, an avowed far-left progressive, was among Trump's antagonists during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation fight

Warren's video doubles as an all-purpose mini-biopic, tracing her life story from school years to a law school professorship at Harvard

The Republican National Committee scoffed at Warren's reveal on Monday, with communications director Michael Reed saying in a statement that her 'latest "disclosure" is a glaring signal that she recognizes this issue is going to be a major problem for her all-but-announced presidential campaign.'

Reed said evidence of a sliver of Cherokee background 'does not give you the right to claim minority status. And today's disclosure still does nothing to answer the question as to why she started checking the box as a minority in the years before she made it to the Ivy League, and went back to being white after being hired by Harvard Law.'

Warren's launch included Ivy League faculty insisting that she was a legendary teacher whose ethnicity didn't come into play during her recruiting.

But Trump said last week that he believes Warren 'faked' her claim of American Indian heritage for career advancement.

As Warren raises her national profile, he has returned more often to ridiculing her as 'Pocahontas' in public speeches.

'She faked her heritage for years and used that. She can't prove anything,' he said Thursday.

'She said her mother told her she had high cheekbones, therefore she's got Indian blood. You know what? I have more Indian blood in me than she does, and I have none, unfortunately. But I have none.'

Trump let a casual 'Pohahontas' jab fly at Warren during a November 2017 White House event honoring Navajo 'Code Talkers' for their service during World War II

In March at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, he jabbed that Warren had said 'Rex Tillerson and I should sit down with the leaders of Iran and North Korea and smoke a peace pipe.'

Warren had de-emphasized her Cherokee lineage since winning her Senate seat in 2012, but the president's use of the issue to marginalize her was always expected to become a flashpoint if the two were to go head-to-head in 2020.

While Trump's rally crowds eagerly lap up his snarks about 'Pocahontas,' Trump has used the polarizing nicknamt in at least one cringe-worthy moment at the White House.

In November 2017 he slipped it into a speech during an event honoring Navajo 'Code Talkers' who had used their native language as an unbreakable secret code to protect American military communications during World War II.

Asked minutes later during a press briefing why the president would use 'offensive' language at such an event, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shot back: 'I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.'

In an email Monday to supporters, Warren said she 'never expected the President of the United States to use my family's story as a racist political joke against Native American history, culture, and people — over, and over, and over.'

Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House: 'I haven't looked at the test. I know that everybody likes to pick their junk science or sound science depending on the conclusion, it seems, some days.

'But I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me.'