2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThis Plagiarism Scandal Could Have Been Easy to Deal with From an Experienced Team
Here is what I figure, I'm just a simple country doctor in the deep south without any fancy political experience or big city learnin' but it only took me about 5 minutes this morning to figure out exactly how Trump's campaign should have handled this. All they had to say was:
"Melena was looking to be as effective as Michelle Obama's 8 years ago and was practicing with different line's from the First Lady's speech to find inspiration but in the excitement of the convention, used a draft that failed to take these lines out."
There, see, total bullshit but easy to think of and admits guilt without actually admitting guilt. Most would have given her the benefit of the doubt. She seems shy and honest.
Instead they went with several bizarre explanations and are still flopping around like a fish on land.
1. "Its not plagiarized! There is no evidence of it!"
2. "The lines are similar but every first lady has used those lines"
3. "They are the same lines but she delivered them better!"
4. "Its only a little bit of plagiarism"
5. "Its Hillary's fault!"
Again, I have zero experience in politics or communications and I think my explanation is 10,000x better than anything Trump's entire campaign and the RNC came up with in 12 hours. I think this just shows how incompetent and egotistical their campaign really is. He has surrounded himself by complete morons who clearly have no clue what they are doing.
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)chillfactor
(7,584 posts)I think a Hillary team could handle it much better if it happened then these rethug idiots have.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,176 posts)No, I don't think they could have ever had the stomach to publicly bestow to Michelle even a hint of competence.
But yeah, they could have reacted better. Even to say, without mentioning how "effective" Michelle speaks, that Melania did a lot of research into previous major party leader spouses and first lady speeches. And that she isn't a professional speech writer and together with her lack of English language skills, she 'may' not have been as careful as she should have been with how she wrote and presented her speech in sharing thoughts that she also strongly agreed with personally. And that she never ever meant to plagiarize at all!
Doctor Jack
(3,072 posts)Another dumpster has burned to the ground
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)space of 24-36 hours. Really awe-inspiring, but not in a good way.
SaschaHM
(2,897 posts)Find someone that is willing to ruin their speech writing reputation for 2-3 mil and send them on their way. Problem solved.
PJMcK
(22,048 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,198 posts)PJMcK
(22,048 posts)Donald Trump has no idea of how to run a national political campaign. And he's a poor manager as demonstrated by the mishandling of this screw-up. Your solution, Doctor Jack, is far better than what these clowns have done!
My own idea is similar. Mrs. Trump should have come out this morning and made a light-hearted joke about it (perhaps by quoting someone famous), expressed her respect for Mrs. Obama and suggested that the world has more pressing issues to address. Problem solved. Instead, Mr. Trump's people bobbled the ball all day!
Donald Trump is an idiot.
Her Sister
(6,444 posts)It was easy for you and your explanation was perfect!