A prominent Republican speechwriter didn’t lift language from an address Michelle Obama gave in 2008 for a draft of a speech he was commissioned to write for Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, according to the copy of the draft NBC News obtained.
A “senior Trump aide” told the network that an early draft Matthew Scully, who worked for former President George W. Bush, submitted to the campaign wasn’t part of the final product.
The realization that a chunk of Melania Trump’s Monday night speech to the Republican National Convention used words from Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention forced some on the Trump campaign to deny the plagiarism. Other prominent Republicans said someone on Donald Trump’s staff should be held accountable.
Scully’s role in the matter surfaced after two anonymous sources told the New York Times that he had worked on a draft of Melania Trump’s speech several weeks ago.
NBC News reported that the Scully draft it obtained shows “none of the passages” from Obama’s speech and indicates “the passages that appeared to have been plagiarized from Mrs. Obama were added at some point after Scully turned in his draft.”
The Trump aide told NBC News that Scully’s draft had been rejected.
So Malaria was the plagiarist. Guess the Drumpf campaign will have to throw her under the bus.
Drip, drip, drip…
As David Frum over at The Atlantic noted:
As Frum rightly points out… imagine for half-a-second what if this was an actual issue of importance, of a life-and-death decision and taking responsibility for making the tough call, where if it goes wrong people die, lives can be ruined, or businesses get destroyed.
Truman’s quote about Nixon applies to Trump:
“Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in. ”
And she’d have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids and their mangy dog!
I wonder how Trump would have handled Benghazi…