Campaign Mops Up Poorly After Melania Trump Speech Mess

Ruth Marcus on Jul 19, 2016

Until it wasn't -- because it was plagiarized. Hello, Earth to Trump campaign?

Then, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort outdid Monday morning's errors, when he went after "petulant" (but popular with the not entirely irrelevant voters of Ohio) Gov. John Kasich.

"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values. She [Melania] cares about her family," Manafort said. "To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy." Yes, but side-by-side doesn't lie. Would some mathematician or linguist somewhere please calculate the likelihood of these exact phrases turning up by random in the same two speeches?

But Manafort wasn't content with that risible argument. He had to go further, insisting that "this is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she tries to demean her and take her down." Hello: Please identify Clinton fingerprints at work here? Unless Clinton sent over a speechwriter, this one's on you.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did his diligent best to explain it all away at a Bloomberg Politics breakfast Tuesday morning. "The distraction gets you off message a little bit this morning, but I think we'll get back to action this afternoon," he said. "All campaigns go through growing pains."

Sure. But not all of them are doing their learning in real time, on live television, in a presidential campaign. This is a campaign not ready for prime time. Its operatives reflect the flaws of its principal -- unprepared, undisciplined and always unrepentant.

========

Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.