Melania Trump speechwriter admits mistake
(AP) The speech writer for Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has admitted she made a mistake when she included lines from a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama in Melania Trump's address to the Republlican National Convention.
Meredith McIver offered her resignation, but Trump rejected it, reported the Associated Press.
In a statement issued by the campaign, McIver said that Mrs. Trump had told her that she admired Mrs. Obama, and had read passages from Obama's speech as an example of things she liked.
McIver said she wrote down the passages and later included them in the speech.
"I did not check Mrs. Obama's speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant."
Within moments of Mrs. Trump's triumphant appearance on the Republican National Convention stage Monday night, accusations of plagiarism surfaced, eclipsing her achievement.
Trump's advisers defiantly denied the charge on Tuesday, though the word-for-word overlap was obvious between Mrs. Trump's remarks the night before and two passages in Michelle Obama's 2008 speech to the Democratic convention in Denver. How that had come about remained unclear.
Yet for Mrs. Trump, 46, a Slovenian-born former model who is Donald Trump's third wife and 24 years his junior, the controversy marred a moment in the spotlight that had been months in the making. It required her to overcome her wariness about public speaking and the traditional role of the politician's wife, as well as her heavily accented English, to present herself to the public as her husband's partner, a poised mother and wife passionate about issues impacting women and children.
With the Associated Press