It wouldn't surprise me if she actually wrote it.

[DanTex]

A professional speechwriter would know better than to steal from, of all things, a former convention speech by a candidate's spouse, which it is absolutely guaranteed that people would compare this speech to. It would have to be sabotage.

But I can imagine Melania Trump googling for ideas, coming across Michelle Obama's speech and liking it, and then trying to change it a little to hide the plagiarism. She's not a pro, she's not a writer, English isn't her first language, maybe she thought she had changed it enough.

[tblue37]

1. This could be true--especially since many other countries do not get as excited about

plagiarism as our society does.

Often I have to sit my international students down and explain this to them, because some of them have no idea that stitching together phrases, sentences, and even chunks of paragraphs is considered academic/intellectual misconduct of the worst sort. They assume that as long as the borrowed parts do not add up to the majority of the work, then using those bits is not wrong.

ON EDIT: HOWEVER, the inclusion of a freakin' Rick Roll in the middle of the speech strongly suggests that this was some ratf***ing sabotage by a GOP establishment minion.

[joshcryer]

3. Playing Devils Advocate here, the Rick Roll could've been intentional.

To get people "talking about it."

But that would presume that the speech was vetted before adding it in and that the whole thing was carefully worked out.

Which would've caught the plagiarism.

If the OP's Devil's Advocacy is correct, however, she would have been the one adding that in, and she said it with such a straight face I don't believe that (it should've been a joking type of thing).

I'm leaning toward ratfuckery or an annoyed speech writer.

[pnwmom]

2. Me, too. Or maybe she tried to write a speech, had bits and pieces that she turned over

to the "team," and then they constructed the final speech, including her bits.

Which no one was smart enough to recognize.