Melania says team ‘betrayed’ her with that Michelle Obama speech plagiarism scandal

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Melania Trump has ruthlessly blamed the Trump campaign and singled out one particular staff member for the embarrassing scandal where she was accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama’s speech.

The former first lady, whose memoir Melania was released on Tuesday, revisits the controversy surrounding her 2016 speech at the Republican National Convention and says she felt “a profound sense of betrayal” by staff members over the saga.

In the book, Melania admits the speech contained “undeniable similarities” to Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech as she accused the campaign’s team of “fail[ing] to implement even the most fundamental safeguard.”

“Why was the speech not vetted?” she asks.

The Trump campaign enlisted Meredith McIver – an in-house writer of the Trump Organization and “a longtime friend” of the family – to support Melania with the speechwriting, she writes.

During the research, Melania says she was drawn to Obama’s speech years earlier.

“During my review of many speeches of previous First Ladies, Michelle’s emphasis on the fundamental values of hard work, integrity, and kindness resonated deeply, reflecting the core principles that were instilled in me by my parents during my upbringing in Slovenia,” Melania writes.

“In my discussions with Meredith, I conveyed the significance of parents imparting these values to their children. While I relied on Meredith to help me with the speech and the campaign to review it, I was pleased with the final result.”

The speech went down well at the RNC and Melania was riding high. But it didn’t last.

“My sense of accomplishment on our flight back home swiftly turned to dismay and shock as news of a potential accusation of plagiarism reached our campaign,” Melania’s book says.

“My initial reaction was one of disbelief, but upon closer examination, the undeniable similarities between the two speeches left me reeling,” she recalls. “The weight of this realization hit me with a force I had never experienced. Looking back, I realized that I had relied too much on others in this crucial endeavor.”

Certain phrases in Melania’s speech matched Obama’s word for word.

In one example, Melania said: “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Obama, in comparison, said: “And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them on to the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.”

Melania writes that, in “frustration”, she asked husband Donald Trump: “Why was the speech not vetted?”

The former president “expressed disappointment” but was “unable to provide” her with an answer.

An apology from McIver issued under the Trump Organization letterhead was ultimately released after the fallout.

“A person [Melania] has always liked is Michelle Obama,” it read. “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.

“This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.”

But, Melania writes, “the damage was done.”

Placing the full weight of the blame on McIver and the campaign, she slams the team’s “failure.”

“The absence of a detailed review was a glaring oversight that now cast a shadow on my work. Discovering the team’s failure to perform their duty filled me with a profound sense of betrayal,” she says.

“These were professionals,” she writes, and accused the campaign and the RNC of “leav[ing] me on my own.”

She adds: “This negligence left me feeling completely abandoned, I felt a deep sense of outrage and disappointment.”

According to McIver’s author page on Amazon, she has co-written books including Trump 101, Trump Thinks Like A Billionaire and Trump Never Give Up.