Melania Trump Plagiarized Michelle Obama's 2008 Speech

Did Melania Trump plagiarize lines for her #GOPConvention speech from Michelle Obama? https://t.co/c9B97hArHD

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) July 19, 2016

It was supposed to be her shining moment. The expectations were high when Melania Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention to give a speech to delegates on Monday, July 18. Instead, the potential first lady became a headline for all the wrong reasons. Find out why in the video above!

Shortly after the wife of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump left the stage to resounding applause, a writer named Jarrett Hill pointed out on Twitter that there were several similarities between the speech the Slovenian former model delivered and the address Michelle Obama gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. Hear the speeches side by side in the video above.

“Melania must’ve liked Michelle Obama’s 2008 Convention speech, since she plagiarized it,” Hill tweeted along with a highlighted sentence. He followed it up shortly afterwards with another tweet: “CORRECTION: Melania stole a whole graph from Michelle’s speech.”

The section concerned being raised with solid values, and while Melania’s speech was not exactly the same as Obama’s, the theme and several of the words were startlingly similar.

“My parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect,” Melania said in her speech.

The sentence was almost identical to one in Obama’s 2008 speech where she said, “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect.”

One sentence later, Melania’s speech appeared to have lifted another line from Obama.

“We want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them,” Melania told the delegates.

Obama’s 2008 speech: “We want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Donald Trump’s campaign has not yet commented on the similarities between the two speeches, but Melania told Matt Lauer in an interview for NBC News on Monday that she wrote the speech “with a[s] little help as possible” and read over the speech once on the plane as the couple headed to the convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

In a statement to CNN in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Trump’s senior communications advisor Jason Miller said, “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. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

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