Well, she obviously didn't write that.

7/19/2016 12:38:49 AM

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/19/12221566/melania-trump-michelle-obama

So bizarre... why even do this??

Maybe the speech writer was secretly #neverTrump and this was a silent protest?

7/19/2016 12:49:44 AM

Either a writer who was pissed at Trump, or you know, maybe the same speech writer who did Michelle's speech.

Unreal, this whole campaign has been so surreal.

It's hard to imagine a this happening with a professional writer, but it's not unprecedented. This famously happened to Joe Biden in 1988. Not quite the same since this is the candidates wife and not the candidate, but wow man, just wow.

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 1:03 AM. Reason : Gghhh]

7/19/2016 12:53:11 AM

Helluva opening for the RNC in the primetime 10pm slot.

It's hilarious watching the right's spin machine trying to downplay the plagerism here. BUT SHE STILL HAD A MOMENT TALKING ABOUT BEING A LEGAL IMMIGRANT.

7/19/2016 1:22:21 AM

Quote :

"Two former Obama staffers said the original author of the lines was Sarah Hurwitz, a former Obama campaign speechwriter who now works in the White House as a special assistant to the president."

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/melania-trumps-speech-appears-to-have-plagiarized-from-miche?utm_term=.do0goePQMm#.ngzZR5mKBe

^^I doubt Obama's special assistant is writing speeches for Trump

Another theory is that this is intentional:
https://twitter.com/interfluidity/status/755263479691436032
"the goto move of the Trump campaign has been to do stuff that outrages elites but not his potential voters as a means to free publicity."

But Trump was recently in a record low point in polling possibly due to his judge criticism. Most of the reporting on the first day has been negative, between the representative saying on national TV that whites are the best race, the underwear model implying Obama was a secret muslim, and now melania's blatant plagiarism.


http://www.vox.com/2016/7/19/12221654/melania-trump-rickroll

Maybe the speech writer pulled off the greatest troll yet against trump?

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 1:35 AM. Reason : ]

7/19/2016 1:27:46 AM

Well, I guess that puts an end to that theory. Holy hell, this is so low rent it's crazy. I guess that's what he gets for not having a professionally run campaign.

I could see this as a vindictive move by a speechwriter, but I don't think Trump would do this intentionally. Say what you will about his many character flaws, but he's very protective of Melania. Can't see him humiliating her for publicity.

7/19/2016 1:35:12 AM

Quote :

" I guess that's what he gets for not having a professionally run campaign. "

I think that's the root of the problem here

7/19/2016 1:40:43 AM

In Soviet RussiaSlovenia, speech plagarizes you.

7/19/2016 2:55:00 AM

if dont steal good ideas, where are they going to come from

7/19/2016 7:33:35 AM

everyone is talking about the speech instead of all the insane shit going on at the convention, so they are probably fine with it

7/19/2016 7:38:40 AM

Melania ' s heavy accent makes me think she's an Indian. How can ppl tolerate her accent but not Chinese accent?

7/19/2016 7:58:11 AM

Why are the republicans still not posting on facebook how we need a classy first lady.

7/19/2016 9:00:45 AM

^^^Nah, no one cares that last night was basically a plain clothes Klan rally, at least not Republicans or the average low information voter. This though? This hurts.

7/19/2016 9:07:53 AM

https://twitter.com/joyannreid/status/755373762581790720

Trump is the male Sarah Palin.

7/19/2016 9:11:12 AM

^^ I didn't watch too much but the dichotomy between the crazy general and Ernst was striking.

And shows you how little of a clue the Trump campaign has that Ernst was out last and spoke to a few hundred people. It should have been her Obama/Rubio moment and she basically got fucked by a clueless sociopathic moron who has no idea how to run a convention.

7/19/2016 9:13:49 AM

^^ ...and here I was thinking "Wouldn't it be crazy if Melania was sabotaging her husband's campaign?"

I was trying to decide if it was more or less crazy than the idea of Trump sabotaging his campaign.

7/19/2016 9:53:11 AM

lmao what is going on? she fucking rick rolled the convention

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KtzdP7mR-4

was the speech writer just fucking with them?

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 11:01 AM. Reason : .]

7/19/2016 11:00:55 AM

she half rick rolled the convention

7/19/2016 11:07:08 AM

The dumpster fire America deserves

7/19/2016 11:29:11 AM

It had to be intentional, because they are aware of all the fact-checking that is done. They had to be aware. Either it was horrible coincidence, or intentional. They can't be that stupid to think they could rip off a speech and not have anyone notice.

7/19/2016 12:15:52 PM

This may be too conspiratorial but Trump would much rather have people be talking about this than his lack of policies and his awful rhetoric. Let's also remember that this will also likely lead to more of his base and the GOP crying media bias since they, for some reason against all evidence and reason, don't think anyone talked about Clinton's emails and Benghazi.

7/19/2016 12:21:15 PM

it's such a horrible play that does nothing but alienate potential swing voters who aren't the base

this is what 30+ years of dog whistles and anti-intellectualism gets you

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 12:29 PM. Reason : .]

7/19/2016 12:24:38 PM

Quote :

"It had to be intentional"

Ding ding ding

7/19/2016 12:44:05 PM

Quote :

" It had to be intentional, because they are aware of all the fact-checking that is done. They had to be aware"

If there's one thing Trump's campaign characterizes, it's lack of awareness for standards and procedures.

I think it's possible this was intentional, but seems more likely to just be incompetence.

7/19/2016 12:47:23 PM

Obviously it was intentional by someone. Nobody plagiarizes that closely by accident.

The question is did the speechwriter do it to make them look bad or did the campaign organize it to make sure people were talking about it?

7/19/2016 12:47:32 PM

After reading this:

Quote :

"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says there is “no way that Melania Trump was plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech.” Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, called the allegation “absurd.” We were reluctant to join the pack in pointing out the obvious when the two convention speeches are compared. Melania Trump is the spouse of the Republican candidate, is not running for office, and likely read from a script that was handed to her, even though she earlier had taken credit for writing the speech “with as little help as possible.” But Manafort, who made his comments on CNN, and Christie, who spoke about it on CNN and NBC, are political pros spinning the facts. Manafort flatly denied that there was any plagiarism of Obama’s 2008 convention speech by Trump’s speech writers."

They're definitely trying to deflect from the rest of the night i think.

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/trump-surrogates-deny-plagiarism/

7/19/2016 12:54:29 PM

At first I really thought there might have been a mole that was trying to sabotage Trump, but given their steadfast denial I honestly think it's just sheer incompetence. I've caught dozens and dozens of students plagiarizing over the years and 95% of them flat out deny it even though I've caught them red-handed with anti-plagiarism software that highlights the proof. I don't see how this is any different, given how they are trying to spin it.

7/19/2016 1:04:10 PM

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/07/19/melania-trump-plagiarism-hillary-biden-barack-michelle/

Breitbart on the scene. Really wish Andrew would come back from his coke binge induced heart attack and shut these clowns down.

------

Also this: http://time.com/4413148/republican-convention-donald-trump-corporate-donors/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter

I think it's fair to ask at this point if he is actively trying to scam the GOP? He clearly has no intention of trying to win.

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 1:11 PM. Reason : X]

7/19/2016 1:05:10 PM

^ i don't have a problem with him snubbing high powered donors, but it's curious he just flew back to NY rather than using this time more productively.

7/19/2016 1:42:37 PM

CNN has portions of the two speeches side-by-side with the same phrases highlighted. In one light, it looks pretty damning. In another light - they're all pretty generic phrases.

I don't know. The whole campaign is a shit show.

7/19/2016 2:03:02 PM

http://www.wral.com/queen-trump-wasn-t-authorized-to-use-we-are-the-champions-/15862014/

7/19/2016 2:13:01 PM

^^ it's perfectly ok to admit that they plagiarized

7/19/2016 2:16:10 PM

He's been using it without their permission. Guess they're not suing him, or he doesn't care about it if they did.

7/19/2016 2:16:28 PM

^^

I think that's their problem. They can't admit Melania liked it was inspired by Obamas (very generic) speech, so they would rather lie about it.

7/19/2016 3:09:46 PM

Quote :

"This may be too conspiratorial but Trump would much rather have people be talking about this than his lack of policies and his awful rhetoric. Let's also remember that this will also likely lead to more of his base and the GOP crying media bias since they, for some reason against all evidence and reason, don't think anyone talked about Clinton's emails and Benghazi."

The news did talk negatively about the Clinton's, but you have to admit outside of extreme right wing Fox News the rest of the press is pretty left. All ABC News does now is try to make the Republican Party look bad. One news article today even mentioned how a picture taken by Paul Ryan had no black people in it.

7/19/2016 7:08:18 PM

come on man, try a little harder

7/19/2016 7:50:30 PM

Obama has destroyed our economy! Our state's unemployment is the lowest ever!

7/19/2016 8:37:42 PM

I thought the same

7/19/2016 9:22:40 PM

Quote :

"bad. One news article today even mentioned how a picture taken by Paul Ryan had no black people in it"

come on, man

I know it's probably tough for you, but it really isn't that difficult to see why that's not a good thing

but you have proven yourself to be a racist, so you're probably unable to get it

7/19/2016 9:39:52 PM

Well, this didn't take long:

http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/melania-trump-joe-biden-plagiarism-allegations-plagiarized-speech-barack-obama-neil-kinnock-deval-patrick/

Again, it still looks bad for Melania, her writers clearly plagiarized and the campaign needs to just admit it and fire the writer, but here's Obama in 2008 ripping off Deval Patrick speeches from 2006.

Lot of the same stuff as the Breitbart article, but with video. Not sure why Nymets is so dismissive.

This is kind of what happens when the same handful if people write almost all the political speeches we hear. Biden's was much more egregious still.

Both old news, but yeah, this stuff happens and it's not really ever on the candidate, it's on the staff. Ultimately I just feel bad for Melania here.

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 10:59 PM. Reason : Dfghh]

7/19/2016 10:56:46 PM

was it moron saying that Trump was going to drop out?

7/19/2016 10:59:02 PM

^ difference is, Biden and Obama either apologized, dropped out, or otherwise admitted their copying of phrases.

Trump paints the Obamas as american hating, secret muslim terrorism supporters, and are not only standing by the plagiarism, they're trying to justify it using bizarre ideas.

How many things does the Trump campaign have to gaslight about before people admit they're just a skeezy, slimy bunch of con artists?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/donald_trump_is_unfit_to_be_president_here_are_141_reasons_why.html

Some of my own personal ones:
- Trump has secret evidence of Obama's birth certificate being fake
- Trump has secret plans to defeat ISIS
- Trump has a secret list of negotiators-- the best in the world
- Trump is not really the alternate John Barron personality he admitted in court he was, and is on tape as being
- Trump never called Megyn Kelley a bimbo and other disgusting words
- Trump's going to build an impenetrable wall and make Mexico pay for it
- Trump didn't know who David Duke was

7/19/2016 11:13:37 PM

Ehh, Obama did it three times. He didn't really apologize either, his writers stole twice from Patrick ("just words", and "asking you to take a chance on your aspirations") as well as from John Edward's of all people. When they got caught that went in the offensive pointing out a Clinton plagiarism and also saying he simply hadn't credited Patrick properly.

Trump is a sleaze, bit this isn't new behavior or even particularly bad. A lot was made over his wife's speech, when frankly it's about the least noteworthy bit of ridiculousness to come out of this whole convention thus far.

[Edited on July 19, 2016 at 11:34 PM. Reason : sdff]

7/19/2016 11:20:56 PM

Quote :

"At last official count, there were expected to be a total of 18 black delegates at the Republican National Convention this week. Yes, eighteen, or roughly 0.7 percent of the 2,472 national delegates in Cleveland. [...] This year’s share of black delegates is the lowest one at a Republican national convention in more than a century. Yes, century. According to a 2012 report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tallied the total number of black delegates at every GOP convention dating back to 1912, the previous lowest share of black delegates at a GOP convention was at the 1964 confab that nominated Barry Goldwater, where 1.0 percent of delegates were black. (That was the only GOP convention the researchers found that had fewer total black delegates than this week’s: 14 of the 1,308 delegates.) Of the previous 26 GOP conventions before this one, the share of black delegates fell below 2 percent on only four other occasions: 1944, 1960, 1964, and 2008. Meanwhile, the high-water mark in terms of diversity, according to the report, was in 2004, when nearly 7 percent of the delegates on hand to watch George W. Bush be nominated for re-election were black. So to recap: According to the best estimate we have, the share of black delegates at this week’s GOP convention is lower than any time it has been in more than a century (and possibly even longer)—including during a dozen or so conventions that took place back when there were still legally segregated water fountains and lunch counters in our country."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/19/there_are_only_18_black_delegates_at_the_gop_convention_according_to_the.html

7/19/2016 11:32:39 PM

^^ Except it's very obvious that this line was plagiarized, and they're denying there was anything remotely plagiarized about it. That is pretty unprecedented.

7/19/2016 11:38:56 PM

Quote :

" Not sure why Nymets is so dismissive"

They COMPLETELY changed what was under that link. Originally it was some vague reference to one line from Michelle Obama that she got from Alinsky. All the other stuff they added and edited. And of course with no notes saying they did because they aren't even trying to be a real news service.

7/20/2016 7:28:32 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/melania-trump-college-claims_us_578dd95ce4b0c53d5cfac0dc

Supposedly she is not being truthful about graduating? I can't imagine they would try to pull off such a big lie, so there could be an explanation.

7/20/2016 10:45:35 AM

7/20/2016 11:23:21 AM

trump has some really unattractive children

7/20/2016 11:26:32 AM

LOL after sending people all over TV to insist it wasn't plagiarized, they finally admit it was plagiarized:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn0ngpIWAAAfo0G.jpg:large

7/20/2016 12:50:31 PM