Image courtesy Gage Skidmore
I’ve seen some commentary that there are more important things to discuss about what happened at the RNC yesterday than Melania’s speech: Benghazi mom’s claims and the politicization of her pain , the stop-trump movement being squashed, Giuliani’s hateful speech. I agree that these are worthy of examination 100 percent, but the Melania plagiarism scandal is absolutely worthy of discussion for a number of reasons:
• The plagiarized speech speaks to the Trump campaign’s complete ineptitude. Every word of every presidential campaign and convention speech needs to go through the vetting process, regardless of who drafted it. This means running through software designed to catch plagiarism (which is often unintentional if you write speeches for a living, though I don’t think this case was). They didn’t do the most basic campaign 101 vetting of the speech from Trump’s wife, which was touted as the crown jewel of the evening
• The campaign managed the visuals of Trump’s stage entrance to the hilt: the backlighting, the twin teleprompters rising aside the vision of our future dear leader. They spent more time on showmanship than on substance. In Trump’s world only optics matter—facts, truth and policy are complete afterthoughts if they are thought of at all. This is the prime example. They are not only inept but their priorities are backwards.
• Trump’s family is supposed to be the big draw speakers for the RNC this year. This tarnishes all of them. Now every word will be scrutinized as they speak this week, and rightfully so.
• You know who else has her words scrutinized? HRC! Hillary Clinton is regularly called out as a liar who belongs in jail because she told congress she “never sent or received classified emails” and upon inspection it turns out that 3 EMAILS OUT OF 30 THOUSAND were incorrectly marked as not classified when they should have been, and she sent them. Republicans continue to argue she risked national security and is unfit because of this.
• The Trump campaign lies and gets away with it as a matter of course, all day everyday. If this is the thing connects the general public to their dishonesty we should be screaming it from the rooftops so the liar thing sticks and swing voters see the light.
• On a positive note, it’s just FREAKING AWESOME how Trump says everything is Obama’s fault and he has the best words…and last night the GOP was riveted and overflowing with praise for Michelle Obama’s words and sentiments.
If that’s not Christmas in July I don’t know what is.