Nearly eight years before Melania Trump copied a few lines from the first lady, then-candidate Barack Obama faced similar charges and said it was all part of the political “silly season.”
At several campaign stops back in 2008, Obama plagiarized two lines in his stump speech from Gov. Deval Patrick (D- Mass.), wich became a huge media firestorm.
During a CNN debate against Hillary Clinton, Obama addressed any concerns about plagiarizing by stating that they were just words and it was a distraction from the serious issues Americans cared about.
“This is when we start getting into silly season in politics and people start getting discouraged by it,” Obama said. “What they want is how are we going to create good jobs at good wages, how are we going to provide health care to the American people, how are we going to make sure college is affordable?”
Clinton said that lifting whole passages from other people’s speeches isn’t “change you can believe in, it’s change you can xerox,” which was met with a series of boos from the audience.
