Melania Trump plagiarism scandal shows deeper problems in Trump campaign

CLEVELAND — When Melania Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention in her iridescent white dress, she almost looked like an angel.

But what was first hailed as a poised and charming performance by a candidate’s little-known and very private wife quickly plunged into a plagiarism scandal that has political consultants, ethicists and speechwriters shaking their heads — and the Trump campaign choking on its words.

The fact that early Monday she had taken credit for writing the speech herself with barely any help seemed beside the point Tuesday as Day Two of the GOP’s convention started out plagued by Plagiar-gate. That the speech borrowed passages word-for-word from Michelle Obama, the wife of Trump’s arch-nemesis, added blissful irony for Democrats.

More important, the “sloppy cut and paste job” — apparently at the hands of a “team of speechwriters” — exposed a more troubling weakness in the Trump camp, said Noam Neusner, a Washington, D.C., communications consultant and one-time speechwriter for former President George W. Bush.

“The campaign staff or staffers who produced this speech didn’t care, didn’t focus on it or just assumed nobody would notice,” Neusner said. “It’s reckless. It shows a lack of professionalism and immaturity. It certainly doesn’t inspire confidence that the people who produced this event are capable of leading the country. The president is not just one person. It’s the whole staff.”

By Tuesday morning, college professors were already using the speech as “the best way of demonstrating plagiarism,” said Jonathan Lovell, an English professor at San Jose State University. And by the afternoon, the controversy was becoming a lesson in poor crisis management as several Republican leaders tried to shift the blame to Hillary Clinton and came up with a series of excuses, including suggestions that passages from Melania Trump’s speech were so ubiquitous they could have been drawn from “My Little Pony.”

Until the roll call of states began on the convention floor Tuesday evening, the story had been as contagious as the Norovirus that infected nearly a dozen members of the California GOP staff, who spent the day confined to their rooms at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio.

Melania Trump is certainly not the first nor the last in the political limelight to lift lines of old speeches to make themselves come across as more polished and intelligent. President Barack Obama was accused in 2008 of taking a line from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, which Obama admitted but downplayed. Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 1987 was derailed during the primaries when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then leader of the British Labour Party.

“Unfortunately, people in politics do this and it’s not strictly liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat,” said Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen, who was once former California Gov. Pete Wilson’s chief speechwriter.

The Trump campaign has offered conflicting versions of what happened. The first news release sent while most delegates were sleeping in Cleveland suggested that while the speech was “beautiful,” some “fragments” may have been borrowed.

When the sun rose Tuesday morning, however, Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, called the allegations of plagiarism “absurd.” The campaign later announced that no one would be fired over the incident.

“If I had done this, if I had written a speech for someone and plagiarized and embarrassed the person, I would have fallen on my sword and quit,” Whalen said.

While the episode is an embarrassment to Trump, it could quickly blow over as the convention moves forward, said Ken Khachigian, who was head speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan.

“It was her speech, not his,” Khachigian said. “Unless Trump plagiarizes part of his speech, I think everything will be all right at the end of the day.”

Louis DiSipio, director of the UC Irvine Center for the Study of Democracy, agreed that few voters would be swayed by the controversy. “I don’t think there will be a negative impact, but I think they missed an opportunity for a positive impact,” DiSipio said. “The spouse’s speech is supposed to be a humanizing moment for the candidates — and if anyone needs that, Donald Trump needs that. Whatever she said was lost in the fact that there was bad speechwriting for her.”

Several California delegates on Tuesday privately groused about the incident, saying they were upset that the speech hadn’t been vetted. But publicly they backed the woman they want to become the country’s next first lady.

“It was a great speech,” said Chuck McDougald, a delegate from South San Francisco. “Little things like this are what makes conventions interesting. I didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took a similar tack when he told the “Today Show” that “93 percent” of Melania Trump’s speech was “completely different” than Michelle Obama’s.

But Hana Callaghan, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said plagiarism isn’t judged by percentages.

“The job of a campaign is to introduce the candidate and to create an informed electorate — and that means political communication needs to be truthful, fair and relevant,” Callaghan said. “When you’re dealing with a case of plagiarism, you’re basically dealing with a theft of words and ideas and that comes across as dishonest.”

Callaghan said she felt some sympathy for Melania Trump, who showed remarkable poise for a woman often in the shadows of her husband.

“I feel bad for her,” Callaghan said. “She was set up by sloppiness.”

Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at Twitter.com/juliasulek.