Some Republicans said Tuesday that someone within Donald Trump's campaign should be fired for the likenesses between Melania Trump's speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland Monday and Michelle Obama's remarks to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
"You can't lift passages," Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis, a Trump supporter, told
The Hill at the Quicken Loans Arena. "It's not what you want to happen, obviously, so there was a breakdown somewhere.
"But you shouldn't try to say, 'Oh, who cares,'" DeSantis said. "You shouldn't do that. "Just be honest with it and say it was a mistake and figure out a way to correct it."
Republican National Committee Chairman
Reince Priebus said that it would be "reasonable" for Trump's speechwriter to be terminated.
"Probably," Priebus said when asked at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast in Cleveland. "But again, it all kind of depends on the circumstances and how these things are written.
"I know what the campaign's statement is on it," he later added. "I won't repeat that.
"But I think it certainly seems reasonable" to fire the speechwriter, Priebus said.
Former rival Ben Carson, who is now a Trump supporter, told the Hill that the speech's author should undergo media training.
But perhaps one of the strongest voices calling for a firing was Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, who was let go last month and who is now a commentator on CNN.
He said that Paul Manafort, who is campaign chairman, should resign if he was the last person to approve Melania's Trump's speech.
"Whoever signed off with the final sign off that allowed this to go forward should be held accountable," Lewandowski told Brooke Baldwin on
CNN.
"I think if it was Paul Manafort, he would do the right thing and resign," he said. "If he was the last person who saw this happen and has brought this on the candidate's wife, I think he would resign because I think that's the type of person he would be."
Manafort himself dismissed the criticism, telling Chris Cuomo on CNN earlier Tuesday that "there was no cribbing from Michelle Obama's speech.
"These were common words and values, that she cares about her family and things like that," he said. "She was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that.
"To think she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."