@JDiamond1 pic.twitter.com/olHa46vbEb
— (((Fire Woman))) (@mamaofautistic) July 19, 2016
Trump's day: co-author attacks him in the press; motorcade car crash; infighting on convention floor; Melania plagiarizes Michelle Obama.
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 19, 2016
One suspects (hopes) this can only get better…
Look at it from Melania’s point of view. She’s a nice sensible bureaucrat’s daughter from the Balkans, who fought her way up from a suspiciously nice apartment and somewhat better outfits than any of her schoolmates could afford, to a design school in Italy, through the slog of low-level ‘modelling’ in New York, to a fortuitous introduction to a celebrity real estate developer and (what we’re told is) a nice secure pre-nup contract. Life as the arm-candy to a D-list celebrity “rich guy” isn’t exactly a sinecure, but she’s put in the work. Her only son attends an expensive Manhattan private school, her parents have a nice apartment in NYC, and there’s lots of professional athletes work harder at staying in peak physical condition for far lesser rewards. Now — just as the old man should be handing off his more strenuous tasks to the offspring of previous wives — a bunch of ambitious underlings have talked the dumb bugger into pouring his money, energy and market reputation into a noisy, embarrassing, tedious pursuit of a job he’s not gonna get.
Think of her little son, Barron; the older Trump kids have finished their expensive educations, they’ve all got their own side businesses (siphoning money out of the family till), once this public sh*tshow falls apart they’ll scatter to the upper-class winds and pretend they had no idea what maggot Daddy got into his brain. But Barron? Melania’s elderly parents? The only resource they’ve got is… Melania.
She was so happy, playing the baron’s wife, until a bunch of scheming courtiers persuaded their aging lord to march on the capital and challenge the kingship. If she has to sacrifice her own reputation in order to strangle this insurrection (and, it is to be hoped, some of the courtiers) — well, it’s not always a noble lady’s highest accomplishments are recognized in her lifetime, says Cordelia.
Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama tonight, and here's the video to prove it: pic.twitter.com/gCDeJL04zY
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) July 19, 2016
Donald Trump campaign spokesman on Melania plagiarism accusations pic.twitter.com/oRpb5wTkOs
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) July 19, 2016
sigaba
Is this a hoax? This I mean.
amk
well, if you put it that way ….
hamletta
@sigaba: Yes, it’s fake. The 2012 DNC wasn’t till August.
Villago Delenda Est
Now to see if this thing gets seriously picked up by the MSM…the ‘tubes have shown the way!
cokane
Shit like this almost makes me think Trump is a Clinton plant
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: at least on teann international, some dood pointed out “the discrepancy” of how melania claimed she wrote ‘the speech’ all by herself with leeetle help and deadbeat donnie’s later media release implying how it’s all her speech writers’ fault. both the blonde anchor (do they all go to a speical cable news college that assures 100% placement?) and the dood agreed it will all be of course be forgotten when the next shiny object comes along.
Trentrunner
From Twitter:
Melania really sounded like a first lady! A specific, current one.
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: its going to be the #1 RNC story all day tomorrow, it’s exactly the kind of SCANDAL but easily explainable shit Tee Vee media loves
jl
Some big lies were told at the convention, from what I have read (didn’t watch the mess).
I think that is more important than Trump’s wife cribbing part of Michelle Obama speech. (Edit, and that cribbing should be reported, and reporters should not make excuses for her, but there were other things wrong with the first night a GOPacolypse 2016! that should be discussed too)
Edit2: looks like I misspelled GOPocalypse. Sorry.
I Am Not King Jon Snow
Are we sure that the Trump campaign is not some sort of elaborate DNC orchestrated false flag operation? This is just too good to be true.
RK
I wonder how many middle-aged women look at Melania as the “other woman”. I don’t see her helping.
Trentrunner
Just realized that the Trump camp statement’s wording leaves it wide open for more plagiarism to be discovered in Melania’s speech.
Get on it, internet!
amk
@I Am Not King Jon Snow: I wouldn’t put anything past that kenyan muslin usurper of a dictaytor.
Trentrunner
@RK: At least one. She met Donald when he was still married to Marla.
piratedan
and after seeing that… Ms. Trump will be given a pass by the media because that is what the media does with the GOP. She’s a novice and as such, will be granted a certain grace and soft tut-tutting when being referred to…
Now if the reverse had happened, I imagine that we would hear the ideas that lawsuits should be considered because someone’s reputation has been stolen and their intellectual property vandalized.
In the grand scheme of things, those of us that maintain more than a passing fancy for politics will be outraged but considering the state of our media, I can’t see any that that this will be spun as the outrageous trespass that it really is. For fuck sake, they used the words that the current FLOTUS used for her husband for their own candidate. What’s next, will they accuse FLOTUS of stealing the heartfelt thoughts and ideas of Melania Trump?
hovercraft
@RK:
But the media has told me that Melania and Ivanka will turm those negative numbers with women around. I mean they are both successful women who love Donald and they can vouch for his character, and since they love him we should too. I totally see this working because they are so relatable.
hovercraft
@Trentrunner:
Plagiarism, what plagiarism there is no mention of any such thing. It was the greatest speech till, the kids speeches. Everyone is just jealous.
RK
What would you expect from a campaign built on lies?
Some have thought so from the beginning and while we don’t know who knew what here it’s hard not to conclude from his many unforced errors that Trump purposely undermines his campaign, that he has no intention of winning.
? Martin
Well, I think Trump has successfully distracted everyone from his disastrous polices (or lack thereof). We have a wannabe dictator trying to run the country and everyone is talking about his wife speech.
amk
@? Martin: You think that donnie is that astute? Or people are that dumb?
Everyone knows about his disastrous and atrocious policies that have been in public sphere for a long time now. This one is just another nail.
KingOfSmugStyle
I believe they’ve already found plagiarism from Rick Astley. She said Trump would ‘never give up’ and ‘never let you down’ one after the other. I shit you not.
AxelFoley
@RK:
Shouldn’t that be more like the “other, other woman”? Since she is his third wife and the second one he cheated on the previous wife with, after all.
Trentrunner
Has there been any official reaction from ANY Dem yet? I can’t find one.
JGabriel
@I Am Not King Jon Snow:
Sure? No, but it seems extremely unlikely that Trump possesses anywhere near the discipline to maintain the act this long without cracking.
JGabriel
@Trentrunner:
Yes, but do we know whether Marla was angered or relieved when she found out?
Hillary Rettig
Apparently there’s an actual Rick Roll in the speech, according to Jezebel.
Amir Khalid
@Trentrunner:
I’m not sure any reaction from a Democrat, let alone Hillary’s campaign, is necessary, now that the media has independently become aware of the plagiarism — and chosen to highlight it.
Rick Taylor
From the original Star Trek, Whom God’s Destroy:
MARTA: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too soon
GARTH: You wrote that?
MARTA: Yesterday, as a matter of fact.
GARTH: It was written by an Earth man named Shakespeare a long time ago!
MARTA: Which does not alter the fact that I wrote it again yesterday! I think it’s one of my best poems, don’t you?
Mai.naem.mobile
I figure the Donald is going to say Michelle plagiarized Melania’s speech. Jeezus,this whole campaign is a verrry long hybrid Veep episode/Christopher Guest movie.
JGabriel
@piratedan:
Just to provide an example, Joe Biden accidentally forgot to credit Neil Kinnock once or twice during a stump speech in 1987, and the media are still repeating Republican allegations calling it plagiarism almost three decades later.
But Melania’s clearly intentional plagiarism will be glossed over and forgotten within two days.
Jon H
I knew something was fishy when she mentioned how she and Donald had “watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate”.
Repatriated
@JGabriel:
That assumes he’s in on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@piratedan: Well, there is the Obama time machine.
JGabriel
@Repatriated: Touché.
Mai.naem.mobile
I tuned into FOX news. They’re blaming it on the Democrat party because you know the Democrat party forced Melanoma to plagiarize Michelle’s speech. Oh,to be a fly on the wall at the Obamas’ residence last night.
NotMax
It’s almost as if a psy-ops program was planned by kindergartners.
JGabriel
Let’s not overlook the obvious irony here:
Melania Trump (or her speechwriters) literally plagiarized a paragraph about working hard. And about your word being your bond.
But the Trump campaign has all the best people.
Amir Khalid
Just curious about something I’ve been seeing in the photos and video from the RNC. Are the red white and blue patriotic costumes just a Republican thing, or do Democrats dress up like that at their convention too? The costumes don’t seem appropriate for a serious political gathering.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
@Trentrunner:
Yes – hysterical laughter.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
This is all Obama’s fault.
If she hadn’t given such a great speech in 2008, then Trump wouldn’t have felt compelled to steal it.
Mai.naem.mobile
I think it’s funny that Michelle sounds more American with her accent vs. Melanoma with her Eastern European accent. All the crap about the Obamas being unAmerican… Also the woman is a freaking model and,while I know it’s not the same thing,shouldn’t she know what damn camera to look at while she’s giving a speech. What a shitshow.
JGabriel
@Mai.naem.mobile:
How? How do they even make that work? Details please.
I wanna see/hear/read the contortions they go through to justify that “logic”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think you quite understand our political conventions.
Some Dems do have “outfits” but not like the Republicans.
Anne Laurie
@? Martin:
Lots of people want their news delivered in little spiced-up nibbles. Those who won’t or can’t take the time to read & understand so much as a longish article on “Here is How Trump Will Destroy America” can still enjoy / remember / post “Trump’s wife stole her big speech from Michelle Obama. After swearing she’d written the whole thing by herself, repeatedly. And then Trump tried to convince people that Michelle’s 2012 speech was cribbed from Melania in 2016.”
The ones with a slightly longer attention span can add “… and MObama’s original speech was written by a woman who’s now working for Hillary Clinton!”
CarolDuhart2
JGabriel
@Mai.naem.mobile:
I suspect Josh Earnest will have field day with this at today’s press briefing.
Shalimar
Vox has a gif of the rickroll, which is hilarious. Her accent adds to the “why the hell would you put that in a major televised speech” quality. I’m guessing it will still be passed around and laughed at long after the plagiarism controversy is over.
JGabriel
@Amir Khalid:
Love of costumes and uniforms is a fascist thing in general.
Republicans are just embracing the tradition.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: Kooky dressing up is traditional, as it’s not so much a convention as a pep rally, but Republicans are crazier about it, as they are in most things.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
That’s not a serious political gathering, it’s a bunch of Republicans!
Snark aside, Americans don’t have a formalized national costume for when we need to signal our patriotic togetherness. My (illegitimate) Scots ancestors have the plaid, and my fellow Irish-Americans wear heavy cableknit sweaters and Irish dance costumes to supplement the “dye everything green, including the beer” aesthetic. My Norwegian-born mother-in-law has a lovely bunad. You guys, I’m told, get to choose between three different traditions.
Best us poor polyglot ‘Muricans can do is probably a tshirt and jeans… not very formal! So we’ve gotten into the habit of signalling our allegiance by wearing various flag-themed bits of clothing, some better designed than others. Since Republicans are by nature more authoritarian than Democrats, they tend to be rather more (shall we say) obsessively indiscriminate in their appropriation. And when more sober people roll their eyes, remarking that mature cultures don’t desecrate a national symbol by plastering it on bikinis, trucker caps, or baby diapers, True Americans retort that we are down-to-earth practical folk… the common clay of the New West…
NotMax
@JGabriel
Case in point.
And another.
JGabriel
@? Martin:
Because making Trump look dangerous just makes his followers more eager and excited to vote for him, but making him look ridiculous – turning him into a laughing stock – will embarrass them and make them less likely to turn out on election day.
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel:
From what I’ve seen so far, it’s all us Democrats’ fault for bringing up Melania’s plagiarism. Just like a bunch of pointy-headed innalecturals, keeping records of stuff that was said years and years ago! Not to mention, so rude of us to spit on the humble wife of our opponent, and at her own coming-out party, no less.
I fully expect Michael Gerson to spell this out in the Washington Post, but I’m not sure whether the NYTimes will assign it to Ross Doubthat or David Brooks.
amk
Oxymoron.
jus’ checking.
eta: polyglot ‘Muricans.
The previous one vanished.
JGabriel
@Anne Laurie:
I can’t imagine Douchehat or Bobo will be interested in taking on that assignment, given their already stated anti-Trump proclivities. Maybe the Times will bring John Tierney back to the Op-Ed page for a day to do the honors.
The Ancient Randonneur
@sigaba: 2012 DNC was held in September of that year. The tweet is a hoax
Applejinx
So, has Trump divorced her yet?
Anne Laurie
@JGabriel: HA!
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
What amazes me is that the costumes suggest not so much Americans doing their patriotic duty, but rather Evel Knievel preparing to jump a canyon.
Gavin
My favorite part of the first day was Colbert stealing the mic for about 60 seconds in his persona as Caesar Flickerman before being physically removed from the stage but still getting off one good zinger: “I know I’m not supposed to be up here, but let’s be honest: Neither is Donald Trump”
JosieJ (not Josie)
@Amir Khalid:
Subtle, we’re not!
Alexander
@Amir Khalid:
Wait… Are you saying there’s a difference?
Mezz
Note also the horrific response of the campaign, which directly contradicts Trump’s Third Wife’s claim to have written herself – and they imply it’s all invented anyway!
NB: The official statement: her “team of writers too notes on her life’s inspirations and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”
Exquise me?? In SOME instances there were “fragments that reflected her OWN thinking”?!? Then whose f*ing “fragments” do the rest of it represent??
Oh – Michelle Obama’s!
(sorry about the extra bolding – couldn’t undo it on Edit!)
Brachiator
@RK:
All of Trump’s women are “the other woman.”
Arclite
Poor Melania. She didn’t write that speech, but she’ll be blamed for the plagiarism. Jesus fuck those Trump guys are lazy. So they hang the woman out to dry. Not that I care, she made her bed. Also, not that Trump cares either. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, amirite?
greennotGreen
@JGabriel: It is my undying shame that I held that “plagiarism” against Joe Biden for years…until I finally read a more complete explanation from one of the last journalists in existence which was that Biden had given the same stump speech many times with the Kinnock attribution before skipping the attribution in one iteration. It’s not like a read a bunch of GOP press releases on the matter. “Reporters” (possibly shape-shifters masquerading as reporters – see Rick Taylor’s comment at 28) repeated the claim ad nauseum, and I didn’t know enough to doubt them.
That said, when I was in high school, before the advent of home computers but some time after the invention of paper, I used to dutifully take notes for term papers on 3″ x5″ cards. So that I wouldn’t be tempted to plagiarize, I would paraphrase the words in the reference. But then, on more than one occasion, with the source material miles away in the library, when I was writing the actual paper, I’d think, “I don’t like the way that card’s written,” so I would re-write it…only to find out later I had converted it back to the original words in the source.
Nevertheless, this Melania/Michelle thing is probably just the result of a lazy speech writer.
wuzzat
@Applejinx: He’ll probably have her forcibly deported and use her as further proof that immigrants are up to no good.
gogol's wife
@greennotGreen:
How lazy do you have to be to steal two paragraphs from the speech by the wife of the Kenyan usurper? It boggles the mind.
cokane
Guys, the House, the House!
http://election.princeton.edu/2016/07/18/16366/
It’s definitely in play
FlipYrWhig
@Mezz:
I teach writing and I know what that means. It means “it’s not all in her own words, some of it is in other people’s words that match how she thinks.” It’s a very common plagiarism defense: “I was taking notes and some of the sources said what I wanted to say so well that it seemed silly to change the wording.”
gvg
Melania is not a native English speaker. I don’t think it was ever believable that she could write such a speech without help.
Trump is not doing well enough to get the best people even if he knew who they were. Sometimes I think some of his employees are actually trying to sabotage him.
Melania has not adjusted to the kind of spotlight connected with our presidential elections. She is still reacting the way that worked before where her husband was wealthy enough that no one contradicted him or her for much and Donald admires overstatements that he thinks reflect well on him so she said she wrote it.
I always found it odd that it wasn’t more of an issue with his rabid anti foreigners support that his wife was not American. Her accent was very noticeable in that speech. Oh well, there is a lot of odd about his campaign.
Quinerly
@Arclite:
She can’t have it both ways…she said to Matt Lauer, yesterday on the Trump plane, that she wrote the speech with “very little help.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What amazes me is the Trump campaign didn’t accuse Michelle Obama of per-plagerazion of Melanie Trump.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Amir Khalid: Well, the first rule of the hapless dreamer is “If you can’t be cool yourself, channel someone you think is cool.”
rachel
@FlipYrWhig: Yup, that’s how the little dears defend it. And then I tell them, “This it when you write, ‘Like blah blah blah, I…’ or ‘to quote blah blah blah…'” That she should have cited Michele Obama...!
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Quinerly: One of the essentials of Trumplife IS having it both ways–in fact, Trumplife is so wonderful because you get to have it as many ways as you want–whatever it is at the moment…
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yet.
JGabriel
@Anne Laurie: Damn, that was quick.
I concede, you win that one.
Feebog
Is this the part where the engine goes over the trestle bridge, or where all the cars get separated from the engine? I can’t keep my train wrecks straight anymore.
Dmbeaster
@greennotGreen: Well, I would posit that it is a certainty that they had Michele’s speech in front of them as source material when drafting Melania’s speech. Why not consult a recent successful example of a speech by a candidate’s wife? Its hardly an accident or laxity when you then end up with such a degree of duplication. After all, it is the lazy person that deliberately plagiarizes, so laziness hardly lessens the wrong.
Dmbeaster
Of course, Don the Con had Melania say that she mostly wrote the speech in the Matt Lauer interview – a lie they had to run from once the plagiarism angle broke.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mezz: Sure you could’ve: Just cut the piece that looks like ” [/strong]” with the open & closed brackets replaced by the less-than & greater-signs, respectively, & paste it back in where you want the bolding to end. Same for “[em] [/em]” with respect to italic, etc. Heck, even an incompetent incontinent geezer like me knows that.
Now you know too. No more excuses! :^p
(Edited because stuff originally within less-than/greater-than signs vanished, dammitall.)
karen marie
@RK: You give Trump way too much credit. After all I have seen and read about Trump, I believe that he really does believe he wants to be president. People have been telling him he should run as early as the 1980s.
eak
Perhaps this is a test. Every potential first lady must say the same speech to see how she well she can hold up? ( I’ve been practicing the speech in hopeful readiness.) Of course, this creates an opportunity – maybe all political offices should create a speech for candidates to say – then we could really compare them against one another.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Good point. Evel Knievel could really fly a motorcycle, and he knew his fancy showman suits, too.
In the past, conventions were where the big decision was made, where the candidate was actually picked. So everyone wanted to show support for their candidate, to show that their candidate had more supporters early on, before any delegate voting took place. Those managing the campaigns could survey the hall and make decisions about who to talk to about getting “Tennessee” delegates to switch to their guy. Hence the odd clothing organized by campaigns.
Funny hats were really popular, the flat “skimmers” especially, because, I suppose, you could put a flat sign around the cylinder, turning your skimmer into a tall top hat for, oh, say, Douglas MacArthur. And of course Texans with 20-gallon cowboy hats.