trump is serious!!!!!

[Lord Jim]

Priebus: I'd 'probably' fire Melania Trump speechwriter

Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday he'd "probably" fire the author of the speech Melania Trump gave Monday night at the GOP convention.

Reports emerged late Monday night that Trump's speech appeared to have nearly copied a paragraph from Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Priebus said "it certainly seems reasonable to me" that someone would be fired over the speech, according to The Washington Post.

“Certainly, I don’t blame her for any of that,” Priebus said of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s wife.

The RNC chairman said he doesn't "have a view yet" about whether the speech constituted plagiarism.

"But I may later this morning," he said.

He said he hasn't yet seen a video comparing Melania Trump's speech with Michelle Obama's address.

Trump's speech Monday night included phrases and precise words that were the same as Obama's 2008 address. Trump said in an interview with NBC that she wrote the speech "with as little help as possible."

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/pre ... eechwriter

[BoSoxGal]

Scooter, you've got great memes.

[Burning Petard]

Perhaps some of you actually had something useful to do last night and did not watch the RNCinCLE. If that is the case, the Washington Post published an excellent summary:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/co ... ge%2Fstory

Except it does not mention the chanting about Roll Call Vote.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

I didn't watch it. I've just been following the news reporting on it this morning, (how it plays in the press is what really matters anyway, in terms of the narrative effect and impact on voters)

I saw the clip of Trump's Stargate-like entrance, which confirms a theory I've had for a long time...

Donald Trump was sent here from an alien planet that has malevolent designs on the Earth and its people...

[BoSoxGal]

I'm going to speculate that she did indeed write her own speech for the most part - it was that vapid in many ways - and that she is either stupid enough or craven enough to think she could use parts of the First Lady's 2008 convention speech and nobody would catch it.

All considerations of Clinton aside, if the Trumps somehow get into the White House, it would undoubtedly be the largest IQ shift from one first couple to the next that has ever happened in the history of the American presidency. The popularity of the Trumps among their supporters in the Republican party and outside the party is the manifestation of the anti-intellectualism that has been polluting our culture in recent years, with the most significant manifestation being the wholesale rejection of climate change science. And Mike Pence doesn't believe in climate change at all.

[Scooter]

Scooter, you've got great memes.

I have friends who find great memes, I just redistribute some of the better ones.

[RayThom]

To be fair to the beautiful and/or talented Melania Drumpf, there are only so many words in the Slovenian and English language. It's no surprise to me that her First-Lady-in-waiting acceptance speech sounds so much like it was plagiarized from Michelle Obama.

Besides, how many presidential wives have ever looked so good? I'm going to let her slide on her RNC performance. You people who are so quick to criticize should do the same.

[rubato]

Hey, stay classy Republicans!

Melonia not only copied a whole paragraph from Michelle Obama but she plagiarized Marva Collins as well:

Always trust yourself, think for yourself, act for yourself, speak for yourself. Be yourself!

Orig.

"Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide."

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Unlike any of the other speakers he is at least someone who has been very successful in his own right.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

And the GOP comes back with their perpetual excuse "it's all Clinton's fault!"

Class!

Campaign manager Paul Manafort not only denied the accusations (he called them “crazy” on CNN Tuesday morning) but he suggested that the reaction was because Hillary Clinton felt “threatened.”

“There’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values that she cares about her family and things like that,” Manafort said. “I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night, she knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy.”

“I mean, this is, once again, an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work,” he added.

There is no indication that Clinton had anything to do with the speech or the reaction to it. The similarities in wording were first noticed by journalist and interior designer Jarrett Hill.

And Trump’s communications adviser Jason Miller sent out a statement continuing the denial.

"In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking,” Jason Miller, Trump’s communications adviser, said in a statement. “Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.” ..."

Do you think the Republicans know about that internet-thing Al Gore invented? You can do a search for text strings in seconds.


yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

Melonia not only copied a whole paragraph from Michelle Obama but she plagiarized Marva Collins as well:

Not to mention Rick Astley!

“He will never give up. And most importantly, he will never let you down.”

Now that's just GOT to be the speechwriters Rickrolling the audience with a sly wink...


ETA:

[Bicycle Bill]

Trump comes out on stage to introduce his wife Melania; playing in the background is Queen's "We Are the Champions."

Freddie Mercury is rolling in his grave.

Surely Trump and/or his handlers are not so clueless that they are unaware of the fact that Freddie Mercury was born in what was then Zanzibar before he and his family emigrated to England; and that he was — gasp — GAY and died of complications from AIDS?

But I guess it has to be true. You couldn't write fiction like this; the critics would savage it mercilessly.

UPDATED TO ADD —
Queen confirms that use of "We Are The Champions" by Trump and the GOP was completely unauthorized.
https://www.yahoo.com/music/queen-confirm-donald-trump-champions-112404249.html
And this wasn't the first time, either.

I'd like to see them hit this blowhard with a lawsuit asking a couple of million bucks for a violation of licensing, especially since this was the second time they his campaign has done this, and they were warned and asked to cease-and-desist after the first such incident.  Maybe the band can arrange to have the papers served on Drumpf while he is at the podium giving his acceptance speech.....

Hell, if you listen to The Donald talk this would be nothing more than chump change to him anyway.

-"BB"-

[Econoline]

Maybe the band can arrange to have the papers served on Drumpf while he is at the podium giving his acceptance speech.....

I hope part of the settlement would include playing "Another One Bites the Dust" when he approaches the podium for his concession speech in November!

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

[Econoline]

To become more serious for just a minute...

Somebody had to say this, and here is SF writer Adam-Troy Castro to do it (on Facebook):

Amusing as it is in an easy-punchline kind of way, the plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech really amounts to very little.

It’s the kind of thing that happens when a newly political wife not trained in this fresh life purpose and by all accounts not comfortable with having to give a speech cedes all responsibility for writing it to lower-level functionaries.

It’s a “cute” and ultimately harmless scandal, by itself, the sort of thing we laughed at when Ronald Reagan said something doddering or when Dubya said something mildly stupid, and still laugh at when Joe Biden drops a gaffe.

Where it becomes harmful is where it distracts from whatever heinous thing the organization is doing. Reagan’s handlers loved, just loved, that Interior Secretary James Watt had been so casually offensive about the “element” that came to see the Beach Boys, and Dubya’s people loved that their President flattened himself trying to push open a locked door, because in both cases those miniscule embarrassments ate up a whole news cycle and distracted us from stories that would have exposed worse; and I guarantee you, Trump’s people are secretly happy that Melania’s speechwriters put in the position of a plagiarist, because we’re talking about that and not about Steve King’s casual white-supremacy, the shutdown of the convention’s online message board because of the raging anti-semitism of its users, the outright fabrication of charges about Hillary Clinton, the angry exit of two state delegations, Rudy Giuliani’s lunacy, the appalled testimony from Trump’s main biographer, and any number of other horrifying moments that establish for anyone not hung up on irrelevancies just who these people are and what kind of danger they represent.

I guarantee you: if the worst you could say about these people yesterday is that some speechwriter screwed up, I’d be voting for him myself.

But this is what we’re paying attention to.

The Melania story rebounds to his advantage.

Okay...now back to the jokes.

[Burning Petard]

At least I have heard on the news today that lots of nice people think she did. However, the Trump functionaries must not think so.

If it was a great speech, I would think it would be out there on the web with lots of connections making it easy to find. I am not great at web searches, but I am not totally helpless either. I looked around in Yahoo and could find lots of excerpts, lots of comments about it, but nowhere could I find the actual speech. There were links to the official campaign page, but I could not go beyond the first page unless I contributed at least ten dollars first.

I think Mr. Adam Troy-Castro is on to something important.

Snail gate.

[Lord Jim]

"I want to be no part of it, New York, New York"...

Sad sad day for the party and the country....

[Gob]

Donald Trump is the official presidential nominee of the Republican Party

Posted at
00:16

With New York's vote, Donald Trump is the official Republican nominee for president.

"It's unbelievable, it's surreal, I'm so proud of my father," said Ivanka Trump after her father officially cinched the Republican nomination for president.

Donald Trump Jr called it "one of the more surreal moments of my life" and said his nomination is "historic".

"It's a real movement, he's a real person who's gotten stuff done, and he wants to bring that to this country," he said.

Yay, all we need now is for him to beat Hillary!!!

[Lord Jim]

Donald Trump Jr called it "one of the more surreal moments of my life"

Well, there's one thing Donnie and I can agree on...