Jabin Botsford for The Washington Post
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Host Henry Louis Gates presented Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whose parents emigrated from Cuba, with evidence that he has Native American lineage. "One of your great-great-great grandmothers was a pure Native American," Gates informed the senator.
Rubio seemed amazed at the news and linked the results of his DNA test to a broader embrace of diversity (with, ahem, no mention of the fact that it seems he's more Native American than his colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren).
"Our common DNA in America is that we almost all descend from a go-getter," he said. "Someone who refused to accept the limits put upon them in the old world, and so they reached for this one place where they were going to be judged by who they were, not where they came from."
Another revelation? Former House speaker Paul Ryan, who's proud of his Irish ancestry, is 3 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, meaning, Gates said, he could have a third-great-grandparent of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Ryan - who might have uttered the word "wow" a dozen times during his segment - welcomed the news (the finding that he's 61 percent Welsh/Irish probably means he's not going to hang up those green ties he sports on St. Patrick's Day). "I think of the melting pot and the fact that you can come from any background whatsoever and make [it] in this country because of our freedom and our system and pluralism," he said.
Gates also shared details of Ryan's maternal great-great-great-grandfather's immigrant journey. "How do you guys get this stuff?" he asked when presented with the passenger list of the ship that had brought his mother's ancestors to New York from Germany. "That's amazing."
And the shockers kept coming: Rubio also learned that his third-great-grandfather had been a lawyer and public prosecutor in Spain. Rubio, who practiced law 200 years later, reflected on that news, recalling how much his father enjoyed being a part of his political campaigns: "It tells you that somewhere in their blood was someone who cared about and was involved in government service - and then there were things that made it impossible for three generations to do it, and then suddenly, you put someone in the right environment, and you wind up in the U.S. Senate."
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was also part of the episode, and Gates had a few bits of new information for her, too. "This is really cool," Gabbard said when shown records that her roots went back to Auckland, New Zealand - something the Hawaii Democrat didn't know. And Gabbard, who is a veteran herself, declared herself "honored" to learn that her third-great-grandfather had volunteered and served in the Union army in the Civil War.
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