Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort reacts to accusations of plagiarism about Melania Trump's convention speech.
PAUL MANAFORT, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: These are themes that are personal to her, but they are personal to a lot of people, depending on the stories of their lives.
Obviously, Michelle Obama feels very much the same feelings towards her family, the fact that the speech itself is being focused on for 50 words, including 'ands' and 'thes' and things like that is totally ignoring the facts of the speech itself. The speech was a poignant speech, we don't beleive there is anything in that speech that doesn't reflect her thinking. And we don't think -- we're comfortable that the words that she used were personal to her.
The fact that they are things like care and respect and compassion, those are not extraordinary words, and certainly when you talk about family they are normal words.
I will note that she knew she was speaking before 40 million people, and that her speech would be noticed by a lot of people. To think she would be doing anything unnoticed is absurd. She knew people were going to be paying attention to her words and the American people did focus on what her message was.
You all are focusing on trying to distort that message... Again, there is a political tint to this whole issue. We've noted that the Clinton campaign was the first to get it out there, and try to say there was something untoward about the speech that Melania Trump gave, as far as we're concerned: When Hillary is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy them.
