Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

Jeffrey Lord: "This is not Benghazi."

blitzer said that tomorrow a previously recorded interview with melania trump will air on nbc news in which melania says she wrote the entire speech herself with very little help

It's not a major thing in and of itself--obviously she'll be cut lots of slack--it's that that's all they're talking about now.

The only things that will be remembered from today are the plagiarism, the rules skirmish, and "Lock her up." Not great, Bob.

there's a thing going on where many people are really, really invested in the idea that both melania trump and ivanka trump are sweet, honest, wonderful human beings who should not be criticized despite the fact that they're actively trying to get a racist demagogue elected president

i wonder why

bonus rickroll?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cns0aEJXEAASoYL.jpg:small

That's great--she should have worked in "You wouldn't get this from any other guy" somewhere.

and of course they stole the language and ideas from michelle obama who the republicans hate so much

this is incredible

between the plagiarism and the rickroll there cant really be any doubt that its sabotage no

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/755270989898878976

insane

from a couple weeks ago.. the "trump institute" he used to scam people with also used plagiarized texts

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/us/politics/donald-trump-institute-plagiarism.html

I almost feel like this was a trap set by the Trump campaign to minimize discussion of the insane alarmism and fascist rhetoric that had happened earlier in the night.

Was just coming here to post https://twitter.com/Trillburne/status/755261943993077760

The Discourse Lover
‏@Trillburne
The night of deranged people calling for rivers of blood was great, shame to see it tarnished by plagiarism

The plagiarism thing is so insane, and so perfectly ironic, but at this point I'm not even sure what degree of outrage is deserves in a campaign that involves giant walls between the US and Mexico, John McCain's courage being impugned for being captured and any number of absolutely insane beyond the pale stuff. My wife this morning was calling it unethical and not classy, but - their candidate is Trump! It's totally, perfectly in character.

So fun to parse:

STATEMENT ON MELANIA TRUMP SPEECH

"In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

-Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor

First she said she wrote it with little help, now it's a team of writers

Does that mean that Michelle is one of Melania's life inspirations?

yes, it turns out melania has the exact same values and beliefs as the obamas which must surely be a terrifying revelation for donald and the gop.

lol any other campaign would have the decency to fire a staffer and rush out some half-sincere apology but somehow I sense that Trump is going to lash out against the media for going after his wife and it's gonna be amazing

"You made it a hot line, Melania made it a hot speech"

lol

Poor guy:

Kristol isn’t exactly Mr. Popular here in Cleveland. He spent the first several months of the GOP primary adamantly predicting Trump’s imminent demise, and the last desperate weeks trying to recruit a conservative independent to run against him. (His pick, an obscure lawyer-pundit, didn’t take the bait.) On the light rail trail to downtown on Monday morning, he said, a fellow commuter looked him straight in the eye and told him: “You don’t turn me on.”

“I was polite and didn’t tell him I was sick of people like him,” Kristol said. He gets it, he said; he knew he wasn’t going to be greeted here with “adulation” and “flower petals.”

But that doesn’t mean he’s without fans. Here came one now! A man in a dapper suit pulled Kristol by the arm and thanked him for coming and for being true to himself. Then he went to get in line with everyone else.

“The Democratic county executive now likes me,” Kristol exclaimed, playfully rolling his eyes. “Is there any other way to get into this thing?”

An old friend of a friend, a former Republican fundraiser, spotted Kristol and reached to shake his hand.

“What are you doing here?” Kristol asked.

“Oh, you know, I’m kind of wandering,” the man said.

“Oh, you’re like all of us,” Kristol says. He looked again at the line. “This is getting ridiculous. I’m going to get a Coke.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/yes-bill-kristol-is-at-the-republican-convention-having-a-terrible-time/2016/07/18/a04232a2-4d18-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_kristol-10pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Trump will point out the, like, words that were different from the cribbed passages and, what, did Michelle Obama invent words now? We're not allowed to use words just because other people used them? Rigged system. Sad!

'like, three words'

a fellow commuter looked him straight in the eye and told him: “You don’t turn me on.”

sounds like he missed an obvious neg from a horny pua convention attendee

Melania must have gone to the Joe Biden School of Notetaking

OMG, I'm frickin' Nostradamus.

The Donald Trump campaign on Tuesday denied allegations that Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention, calling the accusation "just really absurd."

"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

At least one passage in Trump's speech Monday night plagiarized from Obama's address to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump's address following, nearly to the word, the would-be future first lady's own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.

Manafort said the words Melania used were not "cribbed" but are common words.

"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values. She cares about her family," Manafort said. "To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."

"And even if she did steal those words, she only stole the best words, and used them better and more beautifully."

You assume just because I'm holding the knife that's currently being thrust into this man's chest that I'm stabbing him. Which is just really absurd.

did y'all pay attention to the paranoid racist garbage that was going on last night because that wasn't very cute

Manafort said the words Melania used were not "cribbed" but are common words.

Plagiarism is so common at the grade 6 level, especially when it comes to Wikipedia. I call out four or five kids every year on it, just confining myself to really blatant stuff. "Tell me what 'perspicacity' means, C-level language student." Actually, it's less individual words than the way words are put together that makes it obvious. If I checked and followed up on everything diligently, that's all I'd ever do.

Anyway, look forward to the common-words defense. "C'mon, teach--'and,' 'the,' 'said,' I use those words all the time!"

guess this billionaire doesn't own TurnItIn.com

I'm waiting for the defense that Michelle Obama heard Melania's speech, then jumped in her time machine and took the speech with her back to 2008.

This is a level of stupidity I just cannot fathom. Manafort is absolutely right about the level of scrutiny Melania's speech was likely to receive. So...how was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible? It really almost seems intentional. To what end, who can say. Maybe Melania's cannier than we assumed and is trying to save us all?

"America should not have to suffer through the nightmare I experience in bed every night."

"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."

Is there a word for this kind of phallacy? Denying something blatantly obvious by saying she didn't do it, because it would be too blatantly obvious?

"So...how was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible? It really almost seems intentional."

by many accounts Trump barely has any campaign staffers.

"phallacy"

haha

lol oops

I'd think that someone on the Trump campaign would have been assigned specifically to AVOID sounding anything like Michelle's speech.

But that would be, like, clever.

Trump right now is asking someone to tell him what plagiarism is and not listening to the answer

I never ever never check Twitter, but I just looked at Michelle Obama's account. Nothing about last night. Not a new observation, but that really brings it home. Would Trump as president ever be able to hold himself in check, especially if he felt like the injured party? It'd be non-stop cleaning up of Twitter messes. (He claims he'd stay off if elected; he's proved so manageable to date.)

was kinda on and off twitter last night but sounds like they are off to a smashing start

this is the best

I almost feel like this was a trap set by the Trump campaign to minimize discussion of the insane alarmism and fascist rhetoric that had happened earlier in the night.

― based stress reduction (crüt), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 7:35 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

naw being ridiculous is much worse for a politician than being blood thirsty

Every bit of air time spent saying Melania did not copy the speech is air time that Trump and the GOP are reacting, rather than controlling the conversation. Taking time to deny it and explain it away means that they are losing the media cycle. You can bemoan that this is the state of the discourse just now, but it is the world in which we live. And right now I'm loving this: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a staunch Trump ally, defended the campaign Tuesday, saying that '93 percent of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama’s speech.'" So, 7% is a nothingburger, but if it were 9% or 12%, well then, maybe you'd have something. But it's only a trifling 7% so shut up.

i have a sense that melania doesn't give a fuck about any of this and that she is in existential danger of not caring about anything at all.

Sounds like Christie's cribbing his numbers from the roll call vote yesterday:

Seven states needed to submit signatures from a majority of their delegates in order to force a roll call vote. Nine states did so, but the chair said three states had withdrawn their requests. Manafort said there were actually four that withdrew.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/anti-trump-republicans-call-roll-call-vote