Donald Trump Jr. speechwriter shoots down new accusation of plagiarism

A day after Melania Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention, which included passages apparently lifted from a speech Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic convention, Donald Trump’s campaign tried to turn the page on the controversy, which dominated the news cycle.

Meanwhile, initial reports were that Donald Trump Jr. appeared to have done something similar in his speech on Tuesday night. But F.H. Buckley, the younger Trump’s speechwriter, dismissed this criticism, arguing that he had also written the earlier text.

At least two lines of Trump Jr.’s primetime address appeared to have been borrowed from an essay recently published by Buckley in the American Spectator.

“Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class,” Trump Jr. told the crowd at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. “Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks, and not the customers.”

Trump Jr.’s remarks were strikingly similar to a passage in Buckley’s May 2 column, “Trump vs. the New Class.”

“What should be an elevator to the upper class is stalled on the ground floor,” Buckley writes. “Part of the fault for this may be laid at the feet of the system’s entrenched interests: the teachers’ unions and the higher-education professoriate. Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers.”

“The Daily Show” Twitter account was among the first to notice the similarities.

Buckley, though, worked quickly to dismiss the fresh allegations of plagiarism.

“I was a speechwriter for this speech,” Buckley told Business Insider. “So I’m afraid there’s no issue here.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment. But questions surrounding alleged plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech raised early Tuesday were dismissed by Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort as “absurd.”

“There is no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech. These were common words and values,” Paul Manafort said in an interview with CNN early Tuesday. “To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It’s not going to work.”

In her headline speech Monday in Cleveland, Melania Trump spoke about the values that her parents instilled in her.

“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life,” she said, “that your word is your bond, and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect.”

The address, which the would-be first lady delivered after a brief introduction by her husband, was well received by the GOP delegation.

But viewers noticed strong similarities between Melania Trump’s speech and the one Michelle Obama delivered to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller did not address the plagiarism allegations, instead appearing to blame to campaign aides who helped draft the speech.

“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,” Miller said. “Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

Manafort also flatly denied the charges of plagiarism.

“Certainly, there is no feeling on her part that she did it,” he said. “What she did is use words that are common words. To expect her — to think that she would do something like that, knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night, is just really absurd.”

Donald Trump Jr. agreed.

“I don’t think there was anything in there that was that novel in terms of those particular lines,” he told ABC News. “I saw some pretty common words in there. Honestly, you know, there was no novel thought in that. … What I was more concerned about — and what I was more proud of her about — was: She was able to get on that stage, having never done this before. … That she was able to do that for my father is amazing.”

_____

Related slideshows:

On the ground at the RNC Convention – A photo report >>>

Melania Trump in the convention spotlight >>>

Convention floor erupts when no roll call taken to change rules to unbind delegates >>>

Demonstrators protest outside the RNC >>>

Donald Trump’s America >>>