Melania Trump's Speech Plagiarized

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Ivan Seeking, Jul 19, 2016.

  1. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Too damn funny! Even Republican pundits are agreeing. Not only does it seem that some Trump staffer plagiarized part of a speech given by Michelle Obama, for Melania Trump's speech, but Melania took credit for writing it.

    http://gawker.com/melania-trump-apparently-plagiarized-a-section-of-miche-1783889522

    Lying Melania! :rofl:

    ACK. I misspelled "plagiarized" in the title. If a mod would like to fix it would be appreciated. I don't see a way to do it.
     
    Bells likes this.
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  3. Bells Staff Member

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    Jesus wept!

    She didn't just plagiarise.

    She also 'Rick rolled'..

    He will never, ever give up. And most importantly, he will never, ever let you down.” -Melania Trump

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  5. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    Rickrolled!

    LOL
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, that's some serious incompetence there.
     
  8. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Republicans have responded with denial. They are saying Melania used common words, therefore there is no plagiarism. Well that's a new one. I can see thousands of students across the country no telling their teachers, well you see, it really wasn't plagiarism because I used common words.

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    That's kind of like a musician trying to evade copyright law using the common note defense. It wasn't a copyright infringement because all the notes I used are commonly used notes. It's laughable. It's preposterous, but unfortunately, this stuff plays in Republicans circles. That's why they do it. And Republicans wonder why people think they are dumb.

    It's ironic and telling that Mrs. Unconventional i.e. Melania plagiarized the words of President Obama's wife, plagiarizing the wife of the devil incarnate or so Republicans have often asserted.

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    I expected the Republican convention to be an entertaining event, and thus far it hasn't disappointed.
     
  9. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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  10. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, it just happened, the Trump campaign has blamed Hillary Clinton for their plagiarism of Michelle Obama's speech. Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, made the accusation and stated the campaign will not talk about the issue. Just when you think Republicans can't get more dishonest or more gullible, they surprise you. I'm always amazed by the gullibility of the Republican base.
     
  11. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    It is nothing short of brainwashing. Yesterday I had a relative going off about all of Hillary's alleged offenses. When pointed out that, in the case of Benghazi, she was exonerated by a Congressional investigation led by Republicans, he accused the Republicans involved of a conspiracy.
     
  12. Bells Staff Member

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    They have opened themselves up to pretty much declaring Melania Trump as being a liar, no matter which way they go.

    Firstly, she had initially advised that she had written the speech herself, with very little outside help and I believe she said this before she gave that speech at the Convention:

    Mrs. Trump told NBC News in an interview to be broadcast Tuesday morning that her words Monday night would be her own.

    'I wrote it, with as little help as possible,' she said aboard the Boeing 757 jet that reporters and Secret Service Agents already call 'Trump Force One.'

    She told NBC's Matt Lauer that she wasn't nervous about delivering a speech in her most public moment to date.

    'I read once over it, and that's all,' she said.

    Queue being caught stealing someone else's work and the narrative begins to change.

    It goes from Mrs Trump writing her own speech with very little help from others to something completely different:

    “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,” Miller said in a statement. “Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

    You can just see the shifty eyes as they immediately now attempt to set up the narrative that a team of writers wrote the speech, and not Mrs Trump, despite the fact that she said outright that she had written it, "with little help as possible".

    So we have gone from Melania Trump having written it, to a "team of writers". Ooookay then.

    That was the first statement from Trump's campaign in response to the initial horror of her plagiarism.

    Then came Chris Christie, who probably still in the hope of getting something out of setting his own campaign on fire, came out defending her:

    Matt Lauer: You’re a former prosecutor, could you make a case for plagiarism?

    Christie: Not when 93% of the speech is completely different …

    Goddess..

    What's a little theft, right?

    Because this hasn't become enough of a freak show, because Trump's own campaign openly declaring Melania Trump is a liar by now saying that she did not in fact write the speech herself as she says and that instead, a "team of writers" wrote it for her is not enough, Trump's campaign manager then enters the fray:

    But Tuesday morning on CNN’s “New Day,” Manafort categorically denied that Melania Trump’s speech had been lifted in any way from remarks by Obama or anyone else.

    “I thought Melania Trump hit it out of the park when she talked about her love of family, the feeling of an immigrant that comes to this country and succeeds,” Manafort said. “And I thought that the feeling she has towards her husband and her depiction of the real Donald Trump came through loud and clear.”

    “There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These are common words and values that she cares about her family, things like that,” he continued when asked by anchor Chris Cuomo about the plagiarism allegations. “I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work.”

    When all else fails, just fall back onto safe territory and blame Hillary and hope no one notices. And deny everything else.. Common words indeed. Especially when they are used in the exact same way, word for word in some places, as previously spoken by someone else and claimed as one's own.

    And then, the narrative changed again, because you know, it isn't bad enough already:

    In a separate interview on "CBS This Morning," Manafort said the similarities between the two speeches were limited to just three sections and "fragments of words." He said Melania Trump's speech was the highlight of the convention thus far for him and complained that the themes expressed in both speeches "are not words that are unique words that belong to the Obamas."

    Asked by anchor Gayle King if Donald Trump would fire anybody as a result of the plagiarism allegations, Manafort replied, “I don’t think Donald Trump feels there’s anything to fire someone for.”

    Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus offered a different opinion at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast Tuesday morning, where he said he would "probably" fire Melania Trump's speech writer if the decision was his to make. But he also praised her speech as "very inspirational" and said he didn't blame her for hitting on "pretty common types of themes."

    To recap..

    1. We have gone from Melania Trump saying she wrote the speech herself with very little help from others.
    2. Melania Trump then plagiarises, proving she did not write the speech herself because she stole a portion of it from someone else.
    3. Trump campaign responds and now declares that Melania Trump is a liar and that she worked with a whole team of speech writers who took her experiences and wrote the speech for her, "including fragments of her own thinking" (aka what she's pilfered from others), while attempting to deny and ignore the plagiarism itself.
    4. Chris Christie, enters the fray and advises that only 7% of her speech is plagiarised, and that this is apparently not really a bad thing, despite all evidence to the contrary.
    5. Trump's camp doubles down on, denies plagiarism despite all evidence to the contrary. Tries to use "common words and values" excuse.
    6. Trump's camp then decides this isn't going to work, advises that "the similarities between the two speeches were limited to just three sections and "fragments of words"".. Again tries to use the 'common words' excuse to little effect. Despite previously trying to argue that there was no plagiarism.
    7. RNC Chairman also virtually refers to Melania as a liar, by declaring that her speech writer should be fired, despite Melania having said that she wrote the speech.

    The irony of this whole thing?

    She plagiarised a passage about honesty, integrity and hard work.

    Can it get much worse than that?
     
  13. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Well, she's married to Trump. He can hardly complete a sentence without telling a lie or contradicting himself. What honest and decent person could live with the man?
     
  14. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    LOL...yeah there ain't no fact that a good conspiracy theory can't cure.

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  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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  16. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    joepistole and Ivan Seeking like this.
  17. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    I keep assuming that a staffer did this. But maybe Melania really did write it and is so stupid that she didn't think anyone would notice. That might explain why Trump says he isn't firing anyone. Maybe Melania is a closet Michelle Obama fan.

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  18. Bells Staff Member

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    She didn't write that speech.

    But she said she did. If her husband fires someone over it, he is also saying that she lied about writing the speech. As it stands, his own campaign manager has said she didn't write it, despite her saying she wrote it. Hence the spiraling out of control dive to oblivion they see as damage control.

    Had his wife written that speech, it would have been more personal.

    Instead she stole from someone else's life story and claimed it as her own, and then delivered cliché after cliché about her husband that no one is really buying.

    I don't think that's it.

    This is a bad — really, really bad — error. It’s the appropriation of a historic speech, made eight years ago by the first African-American First Lady of the United States, by the white woman who wants to succeed her in the White House.

    This is how it looks and how it has come across. And it is bad.

    What it clearly shows is laziness and complete disarray. It also points to what Trump had said in the past. That he can say and do whatever he wants, and his supporters will just accept it, not to mention his comments about the lack of intelligence of his supporters.

    In other words, they were lazy, preferred to simply steal the history of someone else, even someone they detest, pass it off as Melania's own, and they believed they'd get away with it, because his supporters are too stupid to know any better. Let's not forget that Trump once said he could shoot someone dead in the middle of a street and they would forgive him no matter what. If he thinks they are going to let him get away with murder, what's a little lying and stealing compared to that?

    And it isn't going to end there for Melania Trump.

    Melania Trump’s professional biography says the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump began modeling at age 16, but she only began working full-time after obtaining a degree. She graduated “in design and architecture at University in Slovenia,” according to the bio as of Monday night:

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    It’s a good story, but it doesn’t appear to be true.

    Melania Trump never earned a university degree in architecture ― she dropped out of college after her freshman year, according to her biographers. Still, she claims to have a degree from “university in Slovenia.”

    Questions about her education grew more significant Tuesday morning, following the revelation that Melania Trump plagiarized parts of her speech to the Republican National Convention from one that First Lady Michelle Obama gave in 2008.

    That revelation on Monday raised the question of whether there was anything else Melania Trump hadn’t been entirely truthful about.

    Slovenian journalists Bojan Pozar and Igor Omerza wrote in their biography on the former fashion model that she “became ― and remained ― a college dropout” after leaving the University of Ljubljana’s architecture school following her freshman year.


    On another note, my 10 year old was watching the news with me today, and the story about this came up and he was laughing about it (okay, we both were) and then they showed Trump and his wife next to each other as they walked off the stage and my son went "That's his wife?!? UUUUGGHHHHHH!! But.. but.. she's so young and he's so old and disgusting!.. Look at HIM Mummy! Look at her! How can she marry him? He's so ugh and a racist!".. He was appalled. It's the first time I have ever seen or noticed him commenting about age differences in that way before. I suspect his finding Trump personally offensive probably didn't help matters much, but still, his response was visceral. Which is strange, because we have friends and family where there is a 10+ year difference between spouses. And he's never noticed it.

    But I remembered why I rarely let my kids watch the news, because trying to explain that was not a pleasant experience.
     
  19. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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  20. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    I really wonder if the Trump campaign is meant to fail. All the childish actions and the obvious blunders seem to indicate incompetence or disregard.

    Vote for Gary Johnson and against evil, or don't vote at all. We're doomed either way, and if Hawkery wins, we'll have more wars and social justice sleight of hand to distract from the fucked up machinations of all the crooked politicians we've had "at the helm" since we started running up on the reef.

    God help America. The PTB sure as hell won't.

    Just sayin'...
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So the republican response so far is:

    So she did it; everyone does it. "They all do it, plain and simple."

    She didn't do it. She didn't copy any of it. "To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."

    She only copied 7% of the speech. "93% of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama’s speech."

    She wrote the speech herself. "I wrote it with as little help as possible."

    She didn't write the speech herself. "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." . . . "Whoever was the staff person who wrote this speech should be held accountable and should be fired."

    She was only collaborating with someone she respected. "There was a process, certainly, of collaboration."

    There was no collaboration; it was the staff's fault. "Her thoughts are her own thoughts. And I think if there was a mistake, it was at the staff level, and the staff should be held accountable.


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  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Either it is so dumb it is destined to fail, or it's brilliant. Consider that the Trump campaign just managed to get Melania's picture next to Michelle's picture on every screen in America, and consider all the free publicity.

    Also listen to her speech very carefully. He may be preparing to say "hey, you losers, it was all a joke - you just got RickRolled!"
     
  23. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    You know, I have often had that thought. It's just so stupid, one must wonder if Trump isn't deliberately trying to screw this up. This isn't Trump's first blunder, it's just the latest.
     

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