Melania already owned the speech (said she wrote it), she's going to have to address it.

[joshcryer]

This could well be her "pink press conference" moment.

Only way out is to admit she liked what Michelle said, put it in her notes, and meant to rewrite it but somehow managed to mess it up, and apologize.

The sooner it's addressed the better for her and Trump's campaign.

Any efforts to pass it off will not work. In America plagiarism is a big deal.

[SunSeeker]

1. That would of course be the best way out of this. But that requires an adult in the room.

I'm glad you are not advising Trump's campaign.

[craigmatic]

2. she'll go on talk shows and try to get sympathy

[joshcryer]

3. It's just logical.

I feel for her, because this is a clusterfuck any way you cut it. I hope for her sake she's getting good advice, but you're probably right and they're going to just make it even worse.

For all I know she really did write the thing and what I posed is what happened.

But I suspect there's more to it than that.

[Iggo]

7. If she had good advisers they'd've advised against saying she wrote it.

But she doesn't, so they didn't.

[joshcryer]

9. Truth.

I can't believe this, tbh, it's like, something out of VEEP at this point.

[gratuitous]

11. Good advisers usually want to be paid

So we know the Trump campaign hasn't hired any of those.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. Hard to explain

If, like she said, she wrote it, then she shouldn't have been within 1,000 yards of a copy of Michelle's speech.

[tallahasseedem]

5. I won't accept anything less than an apology to Michelle...

I would never accept them anyway, but she flat out stole that speech.

It's basic, anyone who has ever written a paper from high school through university knows this kind of behavior would have them expelled. Hell, even my son's middle school checks for plagiarism now.

[joshcryer]

6. True that.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

15. Whatever her money motives are - being married to a crazy - she doesn't seem

to have much nuance to her. She strikes me as honest (not sure why I should think that).

Now, if she had nothing to do with adding the lines - then bet she is furious. Bet she wished she could apologize. Somehow I think it's that someone gave her copies for tone, she tweaked them, and no one noticed.

BUT...she lied that she wrote it. Or did she? They could just say plagiarism is just fine in Slovenia.

[joshcryer]

8. ROFL. The Trump campaign isn't owning it.

They are so fucking screwed. How badly can they lose? That's the actual question.

[Nye Bevan]

10. Come on folks. Time to move on.

After all, the speech was certified as 93% non-plagiarized by none other than Chris Christie. Surely that should put an end to this sordid story?

[joshcryer]

13. ROFL, didn't a DUer put it through grammarly's plagiarism engine?

How could not a single Trump staffer done that?

[Gabi Hayes]

12. to your last point.....except if you're william casey

[joshcryer]

14. To be fair, I posted this like, midnight my time.

I could not have predicted the actual outcome.