In a speech at the Republican National Convention, Melania Trump uttered some nice thoughts, including quite a few that had previously been uttered by Michelle Obama in a 2008 speech.
The plagiarism was pointed out. There was commentary.
Melania Knauss Trump on an occasion when she was not called on to make a speech.
People tweeted derisively. My favorite #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes (started by Jesse Williams) is not “Ain’t I a woman?” or even “May the odds be ever in your favor,” but “in hindsight it did seem odd when Melania talked about the challenges of being a black woman at Princeton.”
The Trump campaign first said those were just “common words and values” such as any speech might contain. Then they admitted there was copying – accidental, innocent, and unimportant copying. Combative opportunist Chris Christie [claimed] “93% of the words are completely different.”
Meredith McIver. Why describe her as “an ex-ballerina”? How is that relevant?
Some big-shot speechwriters had written a speech for Melania Trump that she disliked, so she turned to Meredith McIver, a writer and editor who’s long been employed by the Trump Empire. She worked on those amazing Trump books, Trump: How to Get Rich, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire, Trump 101: The Way to Success, and Trump: Never Give Up. (These works may contain some repetition.)
The New York Times spoke with an ex-boyfriend of McIvers’, lawyer Stephen Palitz, who said “She’s adept at crystallizing phrases and saying things in an elegant straightforward way.”
McIver came forth with a statement on Trump Organization letterhead:
My name is Meredith McIver and I’m an in-house staff writer at the Trump Organization. I am also a longtime friend and admirer of the Trump family.
In working with Melania Trump on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.
Yesterday, I offered my resignation to Mr. Trump and the Trump family, but they rejected it. Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences.
I asked to put out this statement because I did not like seeing the way this was distracting from Mr. Trump’s historic campaign for president and Melania’s beautiful message and presentation.
I apologize for the confusion and hysteria my mistake has caused. Today, more than ever, I am honored to work for such a great family. I personally admire the way Mr. Trump has handled this situation and I am grateful for his understanding.
How does that apology rate? She explains how it happened, which is appropriate. And talks about feeling bad, which is less so. And babbles about the loveliness of her employers. Finally comes the actual performative utterance: “I apologize for the confusion and hysteria my mistake has caused.”
She chose interesting words. I don’t call them crystalline. “Confusion” seems to minimize matters. Presumably it refers to the question: “How did part of somebody else’s speech get into Melania Trump’s speech?” But although the explanation that (partly) resolves the confusion is interesting, the confusion isn’t the problem. Plagiarism is.
Then there’s “hysteria.” Not a good thing. It implies that people are upset when they should not be upset. So she’s apologizing for sparking an inappropriate reaction. It’s a fancy sorry-if. ‘Sorry if you got hysterical about a little careless plagiarism!’
In what looks like a hastily-assembled sentence, she feels terrible about the chaos “I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama.”
Can McIver take all the blame for causing “chaos”? What about Melania Trump, who brought up Michelle Obama’s speech in the first place? Didn’t Melania Trump make a mistake in not recognizing the words she’d already heard, remembered, and then read over the phone to McIver? Or perhaps in recognizing them, but not caring that they’d been used following her suggestion?
“How did my watch get on your wrist?” “Oh, I accidentally picked it up to admire, and then absent-mindedly put it on my wrist.” “Thanks for resolving the confusion. Now GIVE BACK MY WATCH.”
Melania Trump knew that she’d thrown Michelle Obama’s speech into the mix, and she had a responsibility to make sure the result wasn’t the same speech with “Barack” changed to “Donald.”
Teachers I’ve talked to say they wouldn’t let a student skate on a plagiarism charge if they said, “Oh, I was reading from Wikipedia to my friend who wrote my paper for me, and she accidentally included the words I read her. No big deal.”
Among other issues people have brought up (Did Hillary Clinton make this happen? No.) (Does Meredith McIver actually exist? Yes) is the one of whether there’s a legal problem in having political campaign work done by an employee of the Trump Organization. It’s murky. Apparently it depends on how she gets paid for it. Now that the question’s been raised, they’ll probably fix it. Though you never know with these folks.
I think this much is crystalline – with her scorn for those who get upset about ethical violations, Meredith McIver is a great fit for the Trumps.
This whole RNC spectacle has been… so… unspeakable that this pseudoapology is just… the cheery pink cherry on the cupcake. The word “hysteria” is amazing; I’ve not seen that reaction at all. Just any reaction at all when “no harm was meant” is apparently problematic – if it’s from THEIR side. Anyone else misspeaking or whatnot is a liar who deserves jail or a socialist.
::yawn::
Nice analysis. I disqualify the apology on the basis of blatant untruth. The Trump campaign went through several different lies to explain the plagiarism before coming up with this gem. This would have been a very easy thing to say right away something like “It was a misguided attempt to honor the first lady, whose words and deeds we admire. It didn’t occur to us that people would think we were trying to pass these words off as our own. We deeply apologize for not explicity stating in the speech that we were using the first lady’s words.” Or something like that.
Donald Trump is a World Wide Wrestling entertainer, and a “reality” TV mogul. I don’t know what his play here was. I think they attempted something and it didn’t go the way they wanted so they aborted. I don’t think this very late fall-on-the-sword “the Trumps are the most wonderful people in the world” apology in any way reflects what really happened.
Trump used McIver as the fall guy previously for his published errors but I do not know if she apologized for him, in writing, in that case.
The New York Times article talks about the previous case http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/us/politics/melania-trump-speech-meredith-mciver.html
“In a 2007 deposition, Mr. Trump was grilled over whether he had overstated his debt by billions of dollars in a couple of his co-written books to make his comeback seem more significant.
He acknowledged the exaggeration, but the mistake, he said, was not his. “This is somebody that wrote it, probably Meredith McIver,” Mr. Trump said.”
Trump has a coterie of women who are long time, loyal employees who are known for fawning adulatory statements and excuses regarding their boss. Personally I believe he feels comfortable dominating women rather than men is the reason he has promoted women in his organization. He can exploit the women who follow traditional social roles so they are willing altruists in his favor. They take the blame for him when errors are caught.