Trump campaign does damage control after Melania plagiarism charges The controversy capped what had already been a turbulent first day of the Republican National Convention.

Donald Trump’s campaign shifted into damage control mode on Tuesday, as a blame game intensified over who was responsible for the plagiarism flap surrounding Melania Trump’s primetime speech, with campaign manager Paul Manafort in the center of the mess.

Midway through day two of a Republican National Convention that was supposed to unify Republicans and highlight the best parts of Trump’s unconventional candidacy, the conversation has instead focused on still-simmering feuds within the party and unforced errors by the campaign.


That portions of Melania Trump’s 15-minute speech Monday night appear to have been lifted from one delivered by Michelle Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention seemed only part of the problem for Manafort as he dealt with the fallout.

His defense of the speech, that Melania Trump “hit it out of the park,” and his repeated insistence that none of her speech had been grabbed from any other source, seemed to create just as much controversy as the allegations of plagiarism themselves.

“There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These are common words and values that she cares about her family, things like that,” Manafort said Tuesday morning when asked by CNN anchor Chris Cuomo about the plagiarism allegations. “I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work.”

The plagiarism controversy capped what had already been a turbulent first day of the Republican National Convention, where anti-Trump forces disrupted proceedings over convention rules that resulted in Colorado's delegation walking off the floor.

Manafort's first controversy of the week ignited Monday morning when he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Ohio Gov. John Kasich was "making a big mistake" and "embarrassing his state" by skipping the convention. Those comments drew an audible negative reaction from the show's live audience in Cleveland and prompted a flurry of responses from Kasich allies defending the governor and attacking the presumptive GOP nominee. The back-and-forth between the Kasich and Trump camps raised concern that the nominee's campaign was burning bridges in Ohio, a state that every Republican elected to the presidency has won.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) quickly rejected Manafort's notion that the controversy surrounding Melania Trump's speech was somehow the creation of Democrats and the Clinton campaign. She scolded the Trump campaign and said it "should be prepared to be held accountable" for the content of its convention.

"The Trump organization, whether it’s Paul Manafort or anyone all the way up to Donald Trump himself, any time they are caught red handed, engaging in distortions, inaccuracies, a fact pattern that is clearly not accurate, they blame someone else," Wasserman Schultz said.

In a statement released early Tuesday morning, Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller said “Melania's team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”

That statement seemed to contradict what Melania Trump herself said in an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer aboard Donald Trump's plane, where the Manhattan billionaire's wife said she personally wrote her speech "with as little help as possible."

On CNN, Manafort said Melania Trump’s speech relied on “words that are common words” and that “certainly there’s no feeling on her part that she did it.”

“To expect her, 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 said.

In a separate interview on "CBS This Morning," Manafort said the similarities between the two speeches were limited to just three sections and "fragments of words." He said Melania Trump's speech was the highlight of the convention thus far for him and complained that the themes expressed in both speeches "are not words that are unique words that belong to the Obamas."

Asked by anchor Gayle King if Donald Trump would fire anybody as a result of the plagiarism allegations, Manafort replied, “I don’t think Donald Trump feels there’s anything to fire someone for.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus hinted at his own displeasure with the plagiarism controversy at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast Tuesday morning, where he said he would "probably" fire Melania Trump's speech writer if the decision was his to make. But he also praised her speech as "very inspirational" and said he didn't blame her for hitting on "pretty common types of themes."

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, now a paid commentator for CNN, said he agreed with Priebus that someone within the campaign should be fired over the controversy. He said it was "shameful" that Melania Trump has become wrapped up in a mess that Lewandowski blamed on sloppiness and lack of organization on the part of campaign staff members.

"I agree with Reince Priebus, whoever was the staff person who wrote this speech should be held accountable and should be fired. I know accountability. I know accountability in the Trump campaign and I know what it’s like to be fired from the Trump campaign," he said. "There absolutely has to be accountability. There’s accountability in everything we do. I’ve had that accountability. Someone should be held to that same standard."

Lewandowski put the onus on Manafort, whom he often tangled with behind the scenes, to find out what went wrong with the campaign's speech vetting process. He went on to say that if it was in fact Manafort himself who gave Melania Trump's speech the campaign's final approval, "he'd do the right thing and resign."

At a Tuesday morning press briefing, Manafort once again refused to concede that sections of Melania Trump's speech had been lifted from the first lady's and instead rehashed many of the arguments he had made earlier in his morning show appearances. Melania Trump "did a tremendous job,"he said, noting that she does not appear or speak publicly very often. He also reiterated his claim that the growing controversy has been manufactured the Clinton campaign.

"We don't believe there's anything in that speech that doesn't reflect her thinking," Manafort said.

"There's a political tint to this whole issue," he continued. "It's just another example, as far as we're concerned, that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person."

On NBC’s “Today,” anchor Matt Lauer questioned New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he, as a former prosecutor, could "make a case for plagiarism." Christie, once under close consideration to join the campaign as Trump's running mate, said he could not, but admitted that there were similarities between the two convention speeches.

Trump campaign denies Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Melania Trump “hit it out of the park” Monday night with her address to the Republican National Convention, remarks that Manafort said were not plagiarized in any way.

"Not when 93% of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama's speech, and they expressed some common thoughts," Christie said. "Listen, Matt, the worst day of a convention is the first day because everyone’s building up to it and everybody gets breathless, both the delegates and the media, about something to cover and a controversy to talk about. I think after tonight we won't be talking about this, we’ll move on to whatever comes up tonight."

Not all Republicans were willing to buy Manafort's assertion that the similarities between Melania Trump's speech and the first lady's were pure coincidence. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who spoke at the convention Monday night, called the two speeches "too common" and said the Trump campaign botched its handling of the controversy, allowing it to grow instead of quashing it.

"I do think those are common words and phrases, but it’s too common," Duffy said. "I mean, they have speechwriters who put it together. Blame it on a speechwriter. Apologize and move on and let’s talk about Hillary Clinton, let’s talk about the economy, let’s talk about ISIS, let’s talk about what happening to our cops. But if you don’t acknowledge at least something’s there, this ends up being not just a one-hour story, it’s a one-day, two-day, it’s a convention story. And that’s the problem."

Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser who has remained close to the presumptive Republican nominee, said that while the media scrutinizes Melania Trump's speech, the issue will be ignored by voters who instead "care more and would be affected more about the image and presence and presentation overall of Melania Trump."

"The point I'm making is, OK, Melania Trump did not write her speech. Barack Obama didn't write his book," Stone said at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast in Cleveland, adding that the campaign should "slap his staffers, at a minimum."

The fallout from Melania Trump's speech is far from the campaign's first brush with allegations of plagiarism. Last March, The Daily Caller discovered similarities between op-eds written by Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, published nearly two weeks apart, on the importance of America's territories and commonwealths. Carson, whose op-ed was published first, chalked up the differences to former staffers of his moving to the Trump campaign. The retired neurosurgeon told CNN, "it doesn't bother me at all."

Donald Trump has also dealt with claims of plagiarism in his business dealings. A New York Times report from last June outlined how the Trump Institute, a seminar business to which Trump lent his name, promised to offer the Manhattan billionaire's business secrets but instead sold customers materials with language lifted from a 10-year-old real estate manual.

