Koch Mouthpiece: Michelle Obama Was The Plagiarist, Not Melania Trump (WITH VIDEO)

Rachel Campos-Duffy at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
Rachel Campos-Duffy at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

We’ve seen some pretty bizarre attempts to excuse the blatant plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention. But a prominent Latina Republican’s attempt to explain how two paragraphs of Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention speech ended up in Melania’s speech takes the cake. Her argument? Wait for it–Melania wasn’t the plagiarist, Michelle was.

Rachel Campos-Duffy is the national spokeswoman for the Libre Initiative, a conservative Latino group bankrolled by the Koch brothers. She’s a frequent guest on Fox News Channel; you may know her is also married to Wisconsin Republican congressman Sean Duffy; the two met on the MTV reality show “Road Rules: All Stars” in 1998 and married a year later.

People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch noticed that a day after giving a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention, the Duffys talked about the shindig in Cleveland with ETWN news director Raymond Arroyo. The Duffys’ interview aired on last Thursday’s edition of ETWN’s weekly newsmagazine, “The World Over.” Watch here.

Roughly five-and-a-half minutes into the interview, Arroyo asked the Duffys whether they thought Melania’s speech was a real issue. Sean harrumphed that the media was trying to “create a controversy out of nothing.” This was consistent with a line he took with TMZ earlier that week, in which he said–with a straight face–that there hadn’t been any plagiarism at all.

Rachel chimed in to say that if anyone should be getting called out for stealing lines, it’s Michelle. How’s that? Well, I’ll let Rachel tell you.

“I’m not sure that she plagiarized. When I saw the two speeches together, I thought, ‘Wow, Michelle Obama has really plagiarized the opportunity message that has been the platform of the Republican Party.'”

Um, Rachel? In case you missed it, Democrats and Republicans have different takes on opportunity. We Democrats believe in giving a people a hand up so they can access opportunity, while Republicans think you have to get it for yourself. So if you’re trying to convince anyone that a Democrat talking about opportunity is a plagiarist, you better try again.

Arroyo reminded the Duffys that Michelle and Melania “used the same line at some point”–referring to Trump Organization staff writer Meredith McIver cribbing two entire paragraphs from Michelle’s 2008 speech and pasting them into Melania’s speech. Rachel claimed that any similarity between the two speeches consisted of “pretty generic stuff.” I’d pay money to see how one of Rachel’s professors at Arizona State University would react if a suspected plagiarist peddled that explanation to them.

As far as Rachel was concerned, the hooey about Melania’s speech was an attempt to distract the nation from how “spectacular” Melania looked. Arroyo fell into line, saying that “to my eye,” the controversy was an attempt to “not talk about” Melania’s story. Rachel agreed, saying that branding Melania a plagiarist was an attempt to make a non-controversial speech controversial.

There’s just one problem. The speech may have been controversial after all. Remember, McIver is employed by the Trump Organization, not Trump’s presidential campaign. All indications are that McIver wrote that speech on Trump Organization time, and the Trump campaign didn’t pay her for it. She also confessed on Trump Organization letterhead, not campaign letterhead.

Add it up, and that speech could be considered an illegal in-kind donation from the Trump Organization to the Trump campaign. Apparently, this kind of co-mingling of corporate and campaign affairs isn’t controversial in the Koch lexicon.

If Rachel thinks that Republicans are the only ones who have any right to talk about opportunity and that cribbing entire paragraphs isn’t plagiarism, she really has learned her lessons well from the Kochs.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.