Manafort to CNN: Time to 'Move On' From Melania Trump's Speech

Melania Trump's speech to the Republican National Convention was "very effective" and personal to her, and as she is not a candidate for office, it is time for the media to "move on" from its speculation over whether parts of it were lifted from first lady Michelle Obama's 2008 convention address, Donald Trump's Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort said Wednesday.

"The controversy you're talking about is not meaningful at all," Manafort told CNN's "New Day" host Chris Cuomo. "Melania Trump gave was a speech that she felt was very personal to her. It was a speech that talked about her love of her country, how she immigrated here, and it talked about meeting a man named Donald Trump who she fell in love with and raised family with . . .

"She was expressing her personal feelings about her country and her husband, and why he is best for the United States. And I agree, that's the final word."

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner hired two well-known speechwriters for Melania Trump's Republican National Convention speech. However, she changed their draft,  leaving a small part of the original after getting help from Meredith McIver, a former ballet dancer and English major who  has worked on some of Trump's books.

Now that it's two days later and Trump's nomination has been confirmed, Manafort said it's time to talk about that, not his wife's speech from two days ago.

"Last night, at 7:17 p.m., Donald Trump became the nominee of the Republican Party, defied all the conventional wisdom and put himself in a position to become the 45th president of the United States," said Manafort. "That's the story. He is the candidate running for president. It is his vision that the American people are going to be talking about."

Cuomo told him he understands all that, but accused Manafort of distracting from the story by refusing to acknowledge that the controversy about Melania Trump's speech is "true."

"When faced with something that you did wrong, you just deny it, no matter whether it is true or not," Cuomo argued. "What happens when you're running the government of the United States and you don't want to deal with what happens then?"

But the truth, said Manafort, "is the feelings that we're expressed by Melania Trump that night, which you don't want to focus on. It was the message she was communicating. That's the truth . . . then move on."

"But I can't move on, because you keep lying about it," Cuomo told Manafort, which he denied.

"As far as we're concerned, there are similar words that were used," he said. "We've said that. But the feelings of those words, and the commonalty of those words do not create a situation which we feel we have to agree with you."

And, Manafort told Cuomo that he was spending time talking about a topic that is "not relevant to anybody other than the American media," and denied the CNN star's claims that he was a liar — while the show host denied calling him one.

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