Plagiarism row takes shine off for Donald Trump

A staff writer at the Trump Organisation, the company owned by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, has claimed responsibility for passages in a speech to the Republican National Convention by Melania Trump resembled parts of a 2008 speech by First Lady Michelle Obama.

The writer, Meredith McIver, apologised for using certain phrases, which she said Ms Trump recited to her in a phone call, without checking to see how closely it matched Ms Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention eight years ago.

Trump’s campaign hopes his formal nomination for presidential candidate will end the dissent surging through the Republican party that has overshadowed the convention’s chaotic start, including the plagiarism charge involving Ms Trump.

Alabama senator Jeff Sessions opened the nominating process with a hearty endorsement of Mr Trump, declaring him “a warrior and a winner”.

There were flurries of dissent on the convention floor as states that Mr Trump did not win recorded their votes, but he far outdistanced his primary rivals.

He was put over the top by his home state of New York.

However, the rocky start raises fresh questions about his oversight of his campaign, which gives voters a window into how a candidate might handle the pressures of the presidency.

The plagiarism row centred on Monday’s speech by Mr Trump’s wife. Two passages from her address — each 30 words or longer — matched a 2008 Democratic convention address by Ms Obama nearly word for word.

Trump’s campaign inadvertently kept the scandal alive on the second day of the convention by insisting there was no evidence of plagiarism, while offering no explanation for how the strikingly similar passages wound up in Ms Trump’s speech.

The matter dominated news coverage from Cleveland, obscuring Ms Trump’s broader effort to show her husband’s softer side.

Despite Ms Trump’s initial claim that she had written her speech “with as little help as possible”, a Trump Organisation staff writer yesterday said she made a “mistake” in including phrases from Ms Obama speech in Ms Trump’s.

Ms McIver said Ms Trump read passages of Ms Obama’s 2008 convention speech during the writing process and Ms McIver made a note of them. She said that she felt terrible for the “chaos” she caused and offered her resignation, which Trump had rejected.

Trump addressed the convention briefly in videotaped remarks, thanking them for formally nominating him as the party’s White House candidate. “

“This is a movement, but we have to go all the way,” he said.

Democrat rival Hillary Clinton pounced on the tumult, saying the Republican gathering had so far been “surreal”, comparing it to the classic 1939 fantasy film Wizard Of Oz.

“When you pull back the curtain, it was just Donald Trump with nothing to offer to the American people,” said Ms Clinton.