Amid fiery Monday night speeches from Republican luminaries like Rudy Giuliani and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Melania Trump, wife of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, gave a warm talk at the Republican National Convention showcasing her hope for the future without bashing the other side of the political aisle.
After about an hour of social media users and the cable TV analysts giving the speech high marks, Twitter user Jarrett Hill noticed one paragraph from Trump’s speech was lifted, nearly word-by-word, from a speech delivered by Michelle Obama during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
CORRECTION: Melania stole a whole graph from Michelle's speech. #GOPConvention
— george stetson 🫶🏽✨🍉 (@jarretthill) July 19, 2016
WATCH: https://t.co/8BCOwXAHSy pic.twitter.com/zudpDznGng
For video proof …
I taught speech for ten years. Even my worst students would not have done this: https://t.co/QhPPC8ENUA pic.twitter.com/co5VveF5cq
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 19, 2016
Making matters worse, Trump told NBC’s Matt Lauer she had written most of it herself.
https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/755255314107162624
Twitter users shook their collective heads in disbelief, particularly since this was a part of the speech extolling the virtues hard work. There was also the question about how something like this could have happened.
https://twitter.com/jdubs88/status/755257460542365696
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/755254070164664321
1. Speechwriter so incompetent to think wouldn't get caught, which is scary b/c quality of people surrounded by, or https://t.co/ZlY28TEAMY
— Seth Mnookin (@sethmnookin) July 19, 2016
2. They have a speechwriter who hates Trump so much it was in purpose, knowing would get caught. https://t.co/ZlY28TEAMY
— Seth Mnookin (@sethmnookin) July 19, 2016
Presumably, we’ll begin to find out answers on Tuesday, but late Monday night into early Tuesday morning, the Trump campaign had managed to turn what had been a singularly sweet moment into a sticky situation.
Update 12:59am CT, July 19: About three hours after Hill’s initial tweet, the Trump campaign released this statement.
Trump campaign issues statement: pic.twitter.com/zgfOMmgGr3
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 19, 2016