UPDATED: July 20, 12:45 p.m. ET
The Trump camp has released a statement explaining the reasoning behind the alleged plagiarism days after the flub. Meredith McIver, a speech writer for the Trump Organization, took responsibility for the borrowed phrases, saying Melania Trump had been inspired by speeches from Michelle Obama, a "person she has always liked." McIver said it was her fault for failing to check the new speech against Obama's. She offered her resignation to Trump, but he rejected it, saying it was an "innocent mistake."
Meredith McIver, an in-house staff writer from the Trump Organization, releases statement on Melania speech pic.twitter.com/mWuPKmjsbn
Original story below.
Melania Trump, wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the keynote speaker at the opening day of the Republican National Convention, got part of her speech from a very surprising source — Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention speech.
Journalist Jarrett Hill noted during Trump's speech Monday night that a section of it sounded familiar.
It did not take long for him to discover the source of Trump's inspiration.
Pretty soon, Yair Rosenberg of Tablet supplied the video evidence:
A transcript of the relevant sections of the two speeches is below:
Trump's borrowing was immediately mocked on social media.
"In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”
Pretty soon, even the world's most famous talking insult comic dog got his say.
Just before giving the speech, Melania Trump told NBC's Matt Lauer that she wrote it "with a [sic] little help as possible." However, early Tuesday morning, the Donald Trump campaign issued a short statement that seemed to contradict this, referring to a "team of writers." Jason Miller, the campaign's Senior Communications Advisor, said the following:
Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort also spoke about Melania's speech on CNN's New Day on Tuesday morning and called the plagiarism claims bogus. "To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Manafort said, before denying that Melania had "cribbed" Michelle Obama's words. "There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values. She cares about her family. To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."
But President Obama's former deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter chimed in as well on Twitter on Tuesday morning and chastised Melania Trump for delivering the speech she gave.
Expect more reactions to the speech throughout the day on Tuesday.
