Donald Trump's son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner hired two well-known speechwriters for Melania Trump's Republican National Convention speech, then she changed their draft, according to
The New York Times.
Speechwriters Matthew Scully and John McConnell helped write signature political speeches, including President George W. Bush's speech after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They sent Melania Trump a draft of it in June, and got no response, the Times reported.
The Times said Melania was uncomfortable with the speech and changed it, leaving a small part of the original. Melania Trump got help from Meredith McIver, who has worked on some of Trump's books, the Times said.
The speech's purported similarities to
Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic convention in 2008 stirred criticism and jokes.
Another George W. Bush speechwriter, Matt Latimer, said, "It just shouldn't have happened. This was an easy home run speech: a successful, attractive immigrant talking about her husband."
Latimer pointed out the importance of originality, saying, "The most cardinal rule of any speech-writing operation is that you cannot plagiarize."
Republican operatives responded with
different explanations and cast blame on the news media, according to the Times.
Twitter users joked about the apparent plagiarism by ascribing well-known quotes from TV theme songs to the Gettysburg address to Melania Trump, using the hashtag #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes, according to
CNN.
A CNN panel looked at
another speech from 2012 they suggested Melania Trump might have plagiarized.
Among those who defended the speech,
ThinkProgress reports that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke blamed the controversy on a speechwriter who he assumed was Jewish.
"I would bet a gefilte fish this was sabotage," Duke said.