Trump Jr.’s RNC Speech Under Scrutiny

One day after Melania Trump found herself in hot water for allegedly plagiarizing a speech by Michelle Obama in her Republican National Convention appearance, Donald Trump Jr. faced similar accusations. Twitter users and the writers at The Daily Show noted that Trump Jr.’s convention speech bore a striking similarity to a column published in May by conservative commentator Frank Buckley. Trump Jr.’s statement that “our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class” seemed like a cheap paraphrasing of Buckley’s remark that the educational system “should be an elevator to the upper class” but “is stalled on the ground floor,” as did subsequent portions of the speech comparing schools to “Soviet-era department stores.” But Buckley, who’d written the original commentary for The American Conservative, took to Twitter to respond to the allegations. Buckley said it “wasn’t stealing,” clarifying to CBS News that the comments were simply recycled, not stolen. “I was a speechwriter for this speech. So there’s not a problem,” he said.