Since Monday night, the Trump campaign has been vociferously denying the very obvious fact that a section of Melania Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention was plagiarized from a speech Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic convention.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said that he didn’t hear any plagiarism and insisted that Melania only used “fragments of words” similar to Obama’s, while Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson seemed to raise doubts about the very concept of plagiarism entirely, claiming that those who observed plagiarism in Melania’s speech must think that “Michelle Obama invented the English language.”

RNC strategist Sean Spicer, for his part, said that there was just as good a chance that Melania Trump’s words came from the My Little Pony character Twilight Sparkle than from the First Lady.

None of this is surprising, as Donald Trump himself often doubles down on outright lies even after they have been thoroughly debunked.

But what is surprising is that the campaign eventually released a statement today from a speechwriter admitting that she plagiarized from Michelle Obama, albeit inadvertently. (Never mind that Melania had previously said that she “ wrote [the speech] with as little help as possible.”)

We wonder if Manafort will continue to insist that the plagiarism was a creation of the Clinton campaign.