Melania Trump’s speechwriter has admitted that some of Michelle Obama’s words ended up in Monday’s convention speech, but said that Donald Trump rejected her offer to resign in the wake of the controversy that has ensued.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Meredith McIver, who said she was the speechwriter behind remarks delivered by Trump’s wife on opening night of the Republican National Convention, despite her offer to her resign from the campaign on Tuesday.
“Yesterday, I offered my resignation to Mr. Trump and the Trump family, but they rejected it,” said Meredith McIver, an in-house speechwriter for the Trump campaign. “Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences.”
Several sentences in Melania’s remarks appeared to have been lifted from a speech given by First Lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. The campaign repeatedly denied that any wrongdoing occurred after the allegations of plagiarism surfaced, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Tuesday that no one would be punished over the incident.
“In working with Melania Trump on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people,” McIver said Wednesday. “Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech.”
She continued, “I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speehches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trump’s, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.”
Trump himself seemed unfazed by the controversy his wife’s speech stirred. Shortly before McIver was outed as the woman behind the speech, the GOP presidential nominee tweeted, “Good news is Melania’s speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics.”
Read McIver’s full statement below:
072016 Meredith Statement by Anonymous fTA6pbiqqW on Scribd
