Melania speech scandal gets four times the coverage as Obama’s lifted lines in 2008

Melania Trump delivered an address Monday evening at the Republican National Convention featuring passages taken directly from a speech that Michelle Obama gave in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention.

The similarities between the two addresses were flagged immediately, and thus began a multi-day news cycle featuring mixed messages, denials and eyebrow-raising defenses from the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign team.

Melania Trump’s speechwriter, Meredith McIver, eventually owned up to the plagiarism, and said Wednesday she accidentally left passages from Obama’s speech in the copy of the address heard Monday evening at the GOP convention.

By the time McIver admitted to cribbing the first lady’s 2008 convention speech, the three major networks — ABC, CBS and NBC News — had already dedicated a combined 59 minutes and 25 seconds to the story, according to an analysis from the Media Research Center.

In contrast, these same networks spent only 14 minutes and 11 seconds in 2008 covering reports that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had plagiarized lines from Deval Patrick.

There is a major difference between the two plagiarism stories, however, which would explain how each event was covered.

Most importantly, Obama got in front of his plagiarism story immediately, and put it to bed by addressing it together with the man from whom he had taken the line. In contrast, the Trump campaign and the RNC responded to the Melania plagiarism scandal with a series of contradictory statements, nonsensical defenses and opposing strategies.

Obama said in a speech on Feb. 16, 2008, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal — just words. We have nothing to fear but fear itself — just words.”

These lines, it turned out, were lifted almost verbatim from an address delivered on Oct. 15, 2006, by Obama’s close friend, Patrick.

Before the plagiarism story could get off the ground, however, Patrick responded quickly, and told reporters the next day that he had given Obama his blessing to borrow the line. He also revealed that he and the senator regularly borrowed speech lines from each other.

On Feb. 19, 2008, Obama owned up to taking the line from Patrick, and conceded he should have given citation.

“I was on the stump, and [Patrick] had suggested that we use these lines. I thought they were good lines. I’m sure I should have — didn’t this time,” he added. “I really don’t think this is too big of a deal.”

“I’m happy to give Deval credit, as I give credit to a lot people for spurring all kinds of ideas,” he added in response to attacks from his Democratic primary rival, Hillary Clinton.

As there was not much more to be said about the matter, the story soon fell out of the news cycle, and the Clinton team was unable to make it into a bigger primary issue.

In contrast, the Trump team and the RNC dragged the Melania story out from Monday to Wednesday with six different excuses ranging from straight-up denial to hiding behind a children’s cartoon.

“The official word from the Trump operation, at various points since Monday night, is that Melania wrote her speech, and she did not write her speech, and a team of writers wrote her speech, and her speech was not plagiarism, and if it was plagiarism, perhaps Michelle Obama had plagiarized ‘My Little Pony,’ because the speech was full of common platitudes, and it was all Hillary Clinton’s fault, and Michelle Obama did not invent the English language, and OK, fine, it was plagiarism, but it was all a big mistake and no harm was meant by any of it,” the Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi wrote, summing up the entirety of the Trump team’s response to the matter.

Trump even kept the story going Wednesday afternoon by congratulating his wife on Twitter for giving the most publicized speech “in the history of politics.”

The McIver statement was released shortly after Trump’s sent his congratulatory tweet.