Humoring the headlines: July 20, 2016

The Republican Convention Update

By Laurie Baron

Laurie Baron
Laurie Baron

SAN DIEGO–On the first evening of the convention, Melania Trump delivered a speech, parts of which were flagrantly plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic Convention.  The initial response of the Trump campaign was either that the charge of plagiarism was unfounded or that Hillary Clinton was to blame.

The latter rationale went like this:  If Hillary Clinton had not enabled Bill Clinton to have an affair with Monica Lewinsky, George Bush would not have been elected.  If George Bush weren’t elected, there would have been no intervention in Iraq (which Hillary voted for) and there would have been no financial crash in 2008.  If there were no crash and war, then Barack Obama never would have won in 2008 and appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  She let Obama withdraw from Iraq which caused the rise of ISIS and advocated for the overthrow of Gadhafi which led to the Benghazi attack and the killing of Americans whose blood is on her hands because she covertly hired Islamic associates of the hitman contracted to murder Vince Foster just to demonstrate that she could handle a diplomatic crisis.  Moreover, Hillary would never have had the opportunity to use a private email server and jeopardize American security by corresponding online with Edward Snowden.  All of these events inevitably resulted in the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republic candidate for president.  If he weren’t nominated, Melania would never have addressed the Republican Convention.  Instead of holding Melania accountable, lock Hillary Clinton in jail!

Today a staffer from Donald Trump’s organization admitted that she plagiarized the speech, but didn’t realize she was doing anything wrong because she had honed her writing skills at Trump University which even plagiarized its textbook.  Her revelation has prompted Mike Pence to take out the “I have a dream” and “ask not what your country can do for you” passages from the acceptance speech prepared for him by another Trump staffer.

Willie Robertson, one of the star’s from Duck Dynasty, spoke to the convention on its second evening, but today he confessed that he had plagiarized his speech from an episode of The Dukes of Hazard.

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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com   San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.