First Melania Trump said this to Matt Lauer about her speech at the convention,
“I wrote it with as little help as possible.”
The campaign quickly had to admit that was a lie, even naming multiple speechwriters including “High-caliber speech writers” Matthew Scully and John McConnell, as well as Trump corporate employee Meredith McIver.
The verdict on Melania writing it herself: BLATANT LIE.
So that gets her off on plagiarism right — she’s just a victim of a sloppy campaign?
No. Not so fast.
Today, Meredith McIver is saying that Melania knew the passages were lifted from the First Lady — because Melania read Michelle Obama's quotes to her.
“In working with Melania Trump on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people,” McIver said in her statement, adding that one of those inspirations was the current First Lady.
“Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech,” McIver said. “I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches.”
Did you catch that? Melania Trump read the Obama passages to McIver first, before McIver wrote the speech. Trump knew they were plagiarized and she delivered those lines anyway.
Of course, like the old man apologizing to Dick Cheney when Cheney shot him in the face, the Trumps made McIver apologize for using a passage that Melania knew came from Michelle Obama.
If I were Chris Christie, I would say…
On lying about writing the speech herself… GUILTY.
On knowingly plagiarizing the passage from Michelle Obama.… GUILTY.