Sen. Marco Rubio dismisses criticism of the "striking similarities" in Melania Trump's address to the Republican National Convention last night to the one First Lady Michelle Obama delivered at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.



"Watching Melania Trump last night many observers noticed some striking similarities in her speech and Michelle Obama's 2008 speech to the DNC. It's pretty clear that somebody, presumably a member of the speechwriting team, accidentally, or not, plagiarized that speech. If the same thing happened on your staff what would your reaction be?" CNN's Jake Tapper asked Rubio Tuesday afternoon.



"Instead of talking about the speech you guys and others are talking about how similar it may have been to somebody else's speech," the former Republican presidential candidate said. "But suffice to say, she is not a candidate, she is not a public office holder or seeking office. She is the potential First Lady of the United States who gave a speech last night that as long as it truly reflected how she felt I think that is what really matters."



"I get why it's a big deal in terms of the inside baseball political coverage," Rubio said of pundit criticism. "But I think for the vast majority of Americans, it doesn't matter one way or the other. It's not a big deal to them. I think they got a chance to meet her last night and hear from her and hear her story, a story that a lot of Americans haven't heard before. I think that is what is going to matter to voters, probably not to the political punditry class, but to voters. That's probably not going to be a big deal for voters."



CNN's Jake Tapper asked Rubio if he would be upset if he found out one of his children was caught plagiarizing. Rubio said the difference is intent, a student would do that on purpose to cheat:





TAPPER: I know the most important job that you have you always say is being the father. If one of the teachers of one of your four beautiful children came to you and said that sentences in a term paper they handed in seemed clearly plagiarized from other material, you would not be upset about that?



RUBIO: I would, but that is different from what you're asking. Last night was a convention speech. And one that I don't think she claims to have written. Obviously, she sat down and talked to someone about her background and someone put those words together for them.



I'm sure the Trump campaign is going to be talking to whoever that is and they're probably not pleased by the fact that there were other words they could have chosen to capture what she meant. But that's different than saying she did it deliberately. And in the case of a kid and a term paper, that would be something they would do on purpose to cheat. I don't think she had any reason herself to do that because she has a great story to tell and there were other words they could have used to tell it. For most voters, they recognize this.

"Mrs. Trump is not a politician, not a political figure, this is new to her. From what I've seen in the coverage in the last 10 minutes of the speech that I caught she did a good job in a very difficult circumstance. I've been on that stage before. There's a lot of eyes on you. She's never done it before. She did a great job," Rubio said.