July 20, 2016

Donald Trump Jr.’s Convention Speech Used Recycled Material From Conservative Columnist

But it’s complicated.


The night after Melania Trump’s address at the Republican National Convention, which was discovered to have lifted words from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech and created a firestorm of unintended controversy, Donald Trump Jr.’s speech came under fire for similar plagiarism allegations.

But this time, speechwriter Frank Buckley is defending the remarks, claiming it wasn’t plagiarism at all because he wrote the words in the first place and just recycled them from a column he published last May in the American Conservative.

“I was a speechwriter for this speech,” Buckley told CBS, dismissing the Daily Show tweet that first pointed out the similarities. “So there’s not a problem.”

The explanation appears to have spared the Republican nominee from a second day of humiliation, but the incident does highlight the continued problem of effective management within Trump’s presidential campaign. Following Melania’s high-profile blunder on Monday, one would think that Trump’s aides would be scrupulous about vetting all the prime-time speeches of family members. But then maybe there’s no limit to how much blame Trump’s people can dump on Hillary Clinton.

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