Still, Christie's faux defense demands that we ask, what percentage of intellectual theft is actually permissible? If 7 percent is acceptable, why not 10 percent? Or 20 percent? Where do we draw the line? Oddly enough, Trump defenders such as the attack-dog-in-chief Chris Christie proudly declared 93 percent of the speech was original, which of course is a tacit admission than 7 percent of the speech was indeed plagiarized and a tactic that the great orator and propane enthusiast Hank Hill would describe as playing "lawyer ball." As the Modern Language Association handbook makes clear, "using another person’s ideas, information or expressions without acknowledging that person’s work constitutes intellectual theft." Melania Trump's speech contained textbook plagiarism. To limit the plagiarism to mere shared vocabulary drastically misses the point and shows a simplistic understanding of plagiarism. That's really the most egregious error in the Trump speech. Trump's speech contains what is sometimes called mosaic plagiarism, where the vocabulary might be altered with synonyms but the structure of the original is maintained. Most people know that when you copy someone else's words directly, it's plagiarism, and, yes, contrary to the protestations of her husband's political apparatus and their many defenders across social media, Trump's speech contained direct word-for-word plagiarism.īut there's more. Oddly enough, many teachers such as myself will in time come to appreciate Trump's speech because it contains, in a relatively short space, several types of plagiarism and may serve as a model for future study.
Trump's speech bore similarities to Obama’s in not only vocabulary but also in subject matter and syntax, making the possibility of a coincidence a mathematical fiction. Period.ĭespite Trump campaign protests to the contrary, the speech contains more than mere generic vocabulary that both Melania Trump and Michelle Obama (or their speechwriters) drew upon. But whoever wrote the words in question, the speech was, in short, plagiarized. Meredith McIver, a speechwriter for the Trump campaign, has since come forward to accept blame for the plagiarized sections. The speech that Melania Trump delivered this week at the Republican National Convention would easily have been flagged for plagiarism in any college-level speech or writing class.
Trump's historic campaign for president and Melania's beautiful message and presentation," McIver said.Let's establish a clear fact from the outset.
"I asked to put out this statement because I did not like seeing the way this was distracting from Mr. Before that, she worked on Wall Street, according to the profile. McIver was described in the statement as an "in-house staff writer at the Trump Organization." She started at the Trump Organization in 2001, according to her profile on the website of a booking agency called the All American Speakers Bureau. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Who would ever think, that to this extent, everywhere you move, no matter where you breathe, it's a big deal? But she's a good woman, she's a strong woman." The speech required her to overcome her wariness about public speaking and the traditional role of the politician's wife, as well as her heavily accented English, to present herself to the public as her husband's partner, a poised mother and wife passionate about issues affecting women and children.Īsked Wednesday how his wife was handling the reaction, Donald Trump told ABC: "It's a different world. For Melania Trump, 46, a Slovenian-born former model who is Donald Trump's third wife and 24 years his junior, the controversy marred a moment in the spotlight that had been months in the making.
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