Anyone who watches the video juxtaposing Melania Trump’s speech at this year’s Republican National Convention with Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention can spot the obvious plagiarism:

It is tempting to describe it as “undeniable.” But the political profession is rife with people who are willing to deny what is obviously so—to brazenly lie to the American public. One such professional is Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort. “To think that she would do something like that, knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night, is just really absurd,” he told CNN.

There is no way of knowing if Melania Trump herself, or a speechwriter, was the guilty party. But of this we can be certain: Whoever included the plagiarized passage in the speech knew how scrutinized the speech would be, and yet, carelessly or deliberately, included it anyway. The takeaway is that the Trump campaign is totally capable of absurd behavior.

For another example of such transparent absurdity, here’s more from Paul Manafort:

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

To think Michelle Obama’s words were cribbed is, in fact, totally rational. And although the words in question were indisputably common ones, the problem is that in addition to being common, they were also arranged into the exact same order, sentence upon sentence, as a previous speech. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” are common words and values. If I claimed original authorship you’d scoff!