I have actually been told “I didn’t plagiarize! My sister/boyfriend/roommate was helping me and he/she/they must have put in those plagiarized lines.” Face-palm.
Well, Melania also claims to have a university degree, but doesn’t.
This about sums it up. Just looked at both clips. If she knew, she’s not just a model, but an actress.
I highly doubt this was the work of the speaker. It is much more likely it was lazy, inexperienced or incompetent speechwriters who probably intended to “massage & re-shape” the words they lifted, but evidently didn’t get around to it…
But, since there is at least a hint of rickrolling in there too, the campaign should at least be wondering about the possibility of a sabatour in their midst.
Since she didn’t go to college, then she must have missed out on the academic dishonesty part of the code of conduct.
^^I thought of sabatoge also. CNN has an article up about politicians who plagarized, including Barack Obama plagiarizing Deval Patrick.
If they said something fresh and didn’t indulge in cliches this wouldn’t happen.
I’m not yawning notelling, because the controversy touches part of what I do for a living, but my instant reaction when I woke up this morning to hear the news was think how common the language felt…and how some words were omitted in the snippets shown on TV and I pondered what different words could have been used to say the same common thoughts if I had been the speechwriter. I do agree with Garland that this is a really good news story for college kids to pay attention to as I do think the “concept” of what constitutes plagiarism is not well understood. If it was lifted, I’m surprised the speechwriter (and I don’t believe for one second it was all Trump’s wife), didn’t attribute as it would have been super simple for the speechwriter to drop an attribute in like “as a former first lady said” or something like that. that wasn’t super sensitive. Reporters would have looked to see which “former first lady” but it would have been a non-event other than a Republican quoting a Democrat.
I had a former boss years ago who used to say “steal shamelessly” but I do think it’s proper to attribute, even if you need to carefully craft an ambiguous attribute if you are going to consciously lift someone else’s writing word for word.
I have not heard any response from the Clinton or Obama camps, and I am hoping that they all just say “no comment” and stay out of this one.
It’s a shame - because I did think she carried herself well. It must not be easy to face an audience of that size, and in a language that isn’t your native language.
On the topic of plagiarism, make sure students know how to reference other material.
My son did a group project last year and told the student that composed the references that they were not formatted properly, but the group still decided to submit the paper.
The instructor returned it to them and said everyone in the group would receive a failing grade if they did not resubmit with proper references since he was unable to verify any of their sources since the references they had submitted had very limited information.
Fortunately he gave them an opportunity to correct the mistake and then a passing grade, not all professors would have been so generous with college students.
Pizza, Obama/Clinton camps are not going to say a WORD until they are 100% certain that no one said it before Michelle Obama 
I agree that it’s a good teaching moment, if it can be divorced from politics. Back in the day, I - and I believe many others - “rephrased” the writings of others. The writings of others were listed as sources, but we thought we were avoiding having to put entire sections of our papers in quotation marks. This morning H was still saying - look, she added this word and changed that word so it’s not plagiarism. My point: college students, don’t necessarily pay attention to your parents on what is and isn’t plagiarism.
I just read what is being shown as the candidates post speech tweet re his wife and something is just not right. The words are 100% the same as what was supposedly tweeted by President Obama on July 19, 2012. This is almost to odd to be real…Here is the exact wording that is making the rounds online. “It was truly an honor to introduce my wife, Melania. Her speech and demeanor were absolutely incredible. Very Proud” The name change was the only difference.
If the campaign is claiming it’s not plagiarism then they need to learn the definition of the word.
I bet there are whole teams of people now running speeches through programs to see if this is the first incidence in someone’s campaign.
Hmm, I’m only pondering and clearly don’t have my feeling crystallized, but is academia it’s own niche? Does 'what happens" in academia reflect what happens in other industries, other niche interest groups? Are the boundaries different because typically academia is about the creation of new ideas. Does it need to be “identical” in theory. I think what is happening here can be a teachable moment to say “look Suzy, this is what not to do in a university sitting” I don’t know the answer but using the instance as a teachable moment for college students is different than copyright infringement. One is a ethical issue and one is a legal issue and we all know that people are all over the spectrum on ethical issues.
Momofthree boys, sure there might be different expectations in different settings. But why would the “national leadership” setting have especially low standards?
She COULD have decided to be really original by speaking the truth: “We got together because he was really rich and I was really hot.” That would probably pass the plagiarism filters.
I very much doubt that they chose each other because they both shared the same values in hard work and the sanctity of one’s word.
I plagiarize my own speeches every year. 
If someone else used words from my speech verbatim, I’d be torn: Should I be flattered that the person repeating my words must think I am incredibly awesome to quote me, or should I feel sorry for the person who cannot come up with their own original ideas? I do quote people at times when I speak, but I also give credit where credit is due.
Frankly, I feel sorry for those who are unable to make a speech that is uniquely their own. It’s not a political comment (the candidate’s wife is not running for office), just a comment. Or should I feel sorry for the speechwriter that is unable to craft an original speech??
@TatinG His name is Jarrett Hill. He’s a journalist. If you go on his Twitter, you can see that he recognized one line word for word. Then he did research and found the extent of the plagiarism.
my 12 & 15 year old both said “you can’t do that!” When they heard the comparisons.
It wasn’t just the similar ideas, as others said those are extremely common. It wasn’t even just the shared phrasing, although that was there too. The order of each phrase wasn’t even altered.
But the Rick Rolling was my absolutely favorite part. I must have played the YouTube clip mash up with it 20 times this morning.