Is this why Melania Trump might have plagiarized her speech?

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

last updated 19 July 2016

Did Melania Trump plagiarize a part of Michelle Obama's convention speech? Well, it certainly doesn't look too good; portions of the speeches, written eight years apart, sound eerily alike. Trump claimed she wrote the speech herself with as little help as possible, which makes one wonder, did she lift the words herself, or was this the work of a very bad speechwriter?

And perhaps the most intriguing question of all — why would she even need to plagiarize?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

It isn't simply that she took Michelle's words and [used] them in a speech about her husband. It's that she had so little to say [about] her own. This speech was supposed to endear us to Trump because it was supposed to be his wife speaking honestly about him as a husband. But when you look at even the presentation of both speeches, you can see Michelle's authentic, unmistakable love for her husband. [...] And that's something we need to think about, perhaps Melania is not as connected to her husband as they want us to think ... for reasons. The party of so-called family values selects a man whose record with marriages and women and his own children is problematic. She seemed rather robotic. Granted, not everyone is very comfortable giving public speeches like that to crowds, but she had weeks to prepare. And I think that because the speechwriters perhaps could not draw anything personal from her about Trump, they plagiarized. They have been together for 16 years. Are you telling me there wasn't one personal story she could have shared about his humanity? [...] In my opinion, there was a very clear disconnect between Melania and Trump last night and it was further solidified by her plagiarism. [Feminista Jones via Twitter]

Explore More

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.