Mrs. Trump’s Lifted Values

By now we are sure you have seen the news that Mrs. Trump plagiarized a decent portion of her RNC speech. This has a lot of potential for fall out.

 But before we dig too deeply into the politics, let’s start with an incredibly important point. The entire purpose of Mrs. Trump’s speech was to humanize Donald Trump, to talk about what she knew about him as his wife that would establish him as a good person who would make a good President. In that speech with that mission, the presumptive nominee’s wife couldn’t find her own words to express that idea but instead took the words of his political rival’s wife. She declared her values and those of her husband in words lifted from the current first lady and did that on the very same day her husband implied the current President approved of cop killings. https://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/trump-suggests-obamas-body-language-reveals-hatred-of-cops-theres-something-going-on/

And her plagiarizing wasn’t the only problem with the speech. Although it was generally pleasant, the speech was completely lacking in specifics. Ann Romney at the 2012 convention told of living in a basement apartment and eating pasta and tuna fish. Laura Bush at the 2000 convention recalled husband George reading Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop to their daughters and the girls enacting the book title by literally hopping on their pop.  And of course if you look at Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech, it’s chock full of details about her and Barack’s life: the first basketball game with her brother; the drive home from the hospital with their newborn daughter; Barack’s first job as a community organizer in Chicago. ] Melania had no stories. She had no words of her own to describe her life with Donald.

No matter what else is done with the rest of the cleanup, this is uncleanupable. Mrs. Trump couldn’t make the case for her husband’s goodness and values without appropriating someone else’s. That the speech stole from Trump’s greatest political enemies is all the more amazing.

When it comes to the politics, the Trump campaign needs to get to the bottom of this matter, find out who was responsible for the plagiarism and excise them from the campaign. In the hours since the speech, no progress has yet been made in this direction. Different factions within the Trump campaign seem to be digging in their heels and fighting it out, including the deposed but still a delegate, Corey Lewandowski. So far it seems as if the Trump campaign is going to attempt to blame the media for the controversy as if reporting on the fact that they stole is responsible for them stealing. The inability to do any of this correctly speaks to a campaign that is not ready for prime time and an organization that would be unable to manage a White House.

 This all comes on the day in which the Republican Party is scheduled to formally nominate Donald Trump. This is eating away at the core of a national convention that is about trying to get out a message. Even if this controversy does not hold up as a problem over the long term, it still had dominated valuable convention time.