How Melania Trump’s Speech Veered Off Course and Caused an Uproar
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and
MICHAEL BARBAROJULY 19, 2016
Melania Trump walking onstage to deliver her speech on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
CLEVELAND — It was the biggest speech of Melania Trump’s life, and her husband, Donald, wanted it to be perfect.
The Trump campaign turned to two high-powered speechwriters, who had helped write signature political oratory like George W. Bush’s speech to the nation on Sept. 11, 2001, to introduce Ms. Trump, a Slovenian-born former model, to the nation on the opening night of the
Republican National Convention.
It did not go as planned, and it has eclipsed much of the action at the party gathering in Cleveland, where delegates on Tuesday night formally nominated Mr. Trump for president.
The speechwriters, Matthew Scully and John McConnell, sent Ms. Trump a draft last month, eager for her approval.
Weeks went by. They heard nothing.
Inside Trump Tower, it turned out, Ms. Trump had decided she was uncomfortable with the text, and began tearing it apart, leaving a small fraction of the original.
Her quiet plan to wrest the speech away and make it her own set in motion the most embarrassing moment of the convention:
word-for-word repetition of phrases and borrowed themes from Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention eight years ago.
The controversy set off by the stumble spread rapidly from the political class to average Americans: African-Americans were angry that Ms. Trump had chosen to swipe the words of the country’s first African-American first lady, especially given Mr. Trump’s hostility to President Obama. Scores of Twitter users, deploying the hashtag #famousMelaniaTrumpQuotes, began to re-attribute famous lines, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream,” to Ms. Trump.
But the mischievous teasing at times turned serious, as blacks invoked a painful history of prominent white figures stealing the work of black artists and presenting it as their own. “I’m not surprised Melanie plagiarized from Michelle,” wrote Yasmin Yonis. “White women have spent centuries stealing black women’s genius, labor, babies, bodies.”
To many Republicans, the lapse seemed frustratingly inevitable from a candidate who has not just eschewed the backstops of a major political campaign — he has mocked them as a waste of money. His campaign slogans, “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” echoed Pat Buchanan and Ronald Reagan. His social media graphics were crowdsourced on Twitter and Reddit by an aide who formerly managed Mr. Trump’s golf club in Westchester.
The mistakes have piled up. Last summer, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter his portrait superimposed over a picture of the White House and what turned
out to be a stock image of Waffen-SS troops from World War II.
But this one stung, in part because everybody was watching.
Jon Favreau, a former chief speechwriter to President Obama, was home on his couch half-following Ms. Trump’s speech on TV while catching up on work Monday night. At first, he was skeptical of the criticism.
“Everyone says, ‘You work hard,’” Mr. Favreau said, reciting a line from the speech. “Political speeches are filled with clichés that are impossible to avoid.” But when he got to Ms. Trump saying, “Your word is your bond,” Mr. Favreau recalled, he stopped short.
“I remember Michelle saying, ‘Your word is your bond,’ and thinking I’ve never heard of someone saying that in politics,” Mr. Favreau said. “That was when I knew it might have been copied.”
