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Ray Live From Cleveland (almost!) Report#3 The Republican Convention
Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty
by JOEL B. POLLAK for 19 Jul 201612,603
In one passage, 22 out of Melania’s 26 words were taken directly from Michelle Obama’s address. This is plagiarism.
“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life,” Melania Trump said in her speech in Cleveland.
In Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech in Denver, she said: “And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, that you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.”
+ Another passage with some similarities that follows two sentences later in Melania Trump’s speech addresses her attempts to instill those values in her son.”We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow,” she said. “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
In the first lady’s 2008 speech, she said, “Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.”
Melania Trump, wife of imminent Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and potential First Lady, faces accusations of plagiarism after several passages in her speech to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland appeared to echo lines from Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver.
Trump’s wife joins Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden as accused plagiarists. Even Michelle Obama was accused of plagiarizing part of her own 2008 DNC speech.+
Barack Obama: “Don’t tell me words don’t matter.” As then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) surpassed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, largely on the strength of his oratory, Clinton said that Obama’s record was “just words.” Obama responded in a speech whose refrain was lifted from then-Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. The Obama campaign did not even bother to refute the claim. Instead, it circulated examples of lines that it said Clinton herself had borrowed from Obama. The left media defended Obama, saying that he had not committed plagiarism, but merely, at worst, “poor footnoting.”
Hillary Clinton: “No bank can be too big to fail, no executive too powerful to jail.” After the Obama campaign accused Clinton of stealing lines in 2008 — a claim supplemented by The New Republic, which accused her of stealing lines from then-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) — she ought to have learned her lesson. But in 2016, she stole linesfrom Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who responded by telling NBC News’ Meet the Press, jokingly: “We’re looking into the copyright issues here.” Clinton was accused of lifting other lines, too — and Sanders supporters responded on Twitter with the wry hashtag: #StealtheBern.
Joe Biden: “My ancestors who worked in the coal mines…”. Biden was found to have borrowed heavily from the oratory — and the biography — of British Labour Party leader Neal Kinnock, without attribution. In addition, it was discovered he had committed plagiarism while in law school. The scandal helped bring down Biden’s presidential campaign in 1988 — though Biden’s angry outburst at a reporter — “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect” — didn’t help, either.
Michelle Obama: “…the world as it should be.” In 2008, the aspiring First Lady was accused by bloggers of lifting lines for her DNC speech from Saul Alinsky. Alinsky wrote, in Rules for Radicals (emphasis added): “The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be.” Michelle Obama said: “And Barack stood up that day, and he spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about ‘the world as it is‘ and ‘the world as it should be."” (Perhaps Mr. Obama who left out the attribution.)
The Trump campaign denied it borrowed lines from Michelle Obama, including: “that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond…”.
Senior communications adviser Jason Miller said: “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.”
Regardless, Mrs. Trump is in good company. She will spend days being likened to Michelle Obama.
Which was, perhaps, the point.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, will be published by Regnery on July 25 and is available for pre-order through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
The Trump campaign is not admitting any wrongdoing. “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,” a statement released on Trump’s website said. “Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”
Ray Live From Cleveland (almost!) Report#3 The Republican Convention
Ray Live From Cleveland (almost!) Report#3 The Republican Convention