Donald Trump’s attack dogs suggested Thursday that Hillary Clinton “plagiarized” an oft-repeated line from Alexis de Tocqueville, one that’s been used by used by everyone from Bill Clinton and Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan.
In Clinton’s speech formally accepting the presidential nomination, she said, “America is great – because America is good.”
She was very likely riffing on a famous quote from de Tocqueville’s canonical “Democracy in America,” where the famed political theorist wrote: “America is great because she is good.”
But Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer seized on the line as evidence of “plagiarism,” hitting back at Democrats after a passage of Melania Trump’s RNC speech was found to be lifted almost word-for-word from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic convention address.
He tweeted:
#plagarism alert @hillaryclinton at @DemConvention “America is great bc America is good,” de Tocqueville “America is great bc she is good”
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) July 29, 2016
Not long after, CNN’s resident Trump supporter, Jeffrey Lord, brought up Spicer’s tweet on air.
“There was no reference to Alexis de Tocqueville,” he said, as his fellow panelists erupted in laughter. He also suggested a double standard was at work, saying, “It’s plagiarism from Melania, and it’s borrowing from Hillary.”
But even Lord didn’t seem to take his argument seriously. He laughed along with the group and introduced Spicer’s tweet as “amusing.”
It’s called a quote you fucking idiots.
This is NOT the same as plagiarizing someone else’s speech.
Orange Julius Caesar refuses to let his (current) wife’s fame as a plagiarist wane.
Why do you guys cuss so much? There’s a time and place for that sort of language.
I was watching the CNN panel last night. About every 5 minutes Jeffrey Lord would say something asinine, and the panel either just ignored him, talked around him, or stopped talking for about 5 seconds as if to say “what the hell is he talking about, is he for real?”
For those with a high school education it’s a known reference; part of the cultural fabric, so it can’t actually be plagiarized, certainly not in this context. But of course that posits an education. And possibly critical thinking skills.