Does Donald Trump Write His Own Speeches? Next President Claims He Wrote Inauguration Day Address But A Speechwriter Might Have Done It

Two senior transition team officials said President-elect Donald Trump wrote his inaugural address himself, CNN reported, verifying a claim Trump seemed to be making in a Wednesday tweet: that he had crafted the first speech of his presidency.

But what hasn't been explained by Trump or his transition team is why Trump spokesman Jason Miller confirmed to CNN in December that Trump aide Stephen Miller (no relation) was writing the inaugural address.

Trump's tweet on Wednesday, which included a picture the president-elect said was of himself working on his speech in his Mar-a-Lago compound in December, was widely mocked on Twitter. Users of the social media platform pointed out that Trump seemed to be holding a sharpie, which wouldn't seem to be the ideal tool for writing a speech. One user shared another photo of a reception desk that looked like the same desk at which Trump was working on his speech.

Given the obviously staged nature of the picture, it's not unreasonable to wonder if Miller wrote, or at least helped write, the speech Trump will deliver as president on Friday. After joining the Trump campaign a year ago, Miller, 31, wrote most of Trump's major campaign speeches in 2016, including his address at the Republican National Convention. The California native was previously an aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general.

The Trump campaign has had issues surrounding authorship of speeches. At the Republican National Convention, Melania Trump apparently lifted lines from the address Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

In 2009, Barack Obama tapped Jon Favreau, 27, to help him write his first inaugural address. The first known presidential speechwriter is believed to have been Judson Welliver, who was hired by Warren G. Harding as a "literary clerk" in 1921.