The Slatest

Here Is a Video of All the Times the Trump Campaign Lied About Melania Trump’s Speech

Though it was almost immediately obvious that several lines in Melania Trump’s Monday RNC speech had been copied from Michelle Obama’s speech to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the Trump campaign and its defenders in the Republican establishment spent 36 hours denying that any plagiarism had occurred. In a statement released this afternoon, though, Melania’s speechwriter Meredith McIver admitted that she had in fact put passages from Obama’s speech into the final text after Melania read them to her over the phone. (McIver says it was an accident.) Above: Two days’ worth of now-undermined claims—by Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, and RNC communications director Sean Spicer—that Melania’s speech involved common phrases that could have come from anywhere (including My Little Pony) and had nothing to do with Michelle Obama. (Also included: Manafort’s argument that Hillary Clinton created this entire scandal because she was angry about being challenged by another woman.)