Donald Trump Jr.’s Speechwriter Quashes Allegations Of Plagiarism In RNC Address

Melania Trump came under fire Monday for allegedly plagiarizing First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2008 address when she spoke at the Republican National Convention. Now, it looks like her stepson Donald Trump Jr. might have plagiarized his speech too. But, it isn’t that simple.

Donald Trump Jr., in his Tuesday speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, attacked Hillary Clinton saying that the presumptive Democratic U.S. presidential candidate would be the first president “who can't pass a background test.”

“Hillary Clinton is a risk Americans can't afford to take,” the eldest son of Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump said.

Donald Trump Jr.’s speech, however, allegedly bore resemblance to an article by F.H. Buckley, a law professor at George Mason University. "The Daily Show" posted excerpts of Trump Jr.’s speech and an article by Buckley who writes for the American Conservative on its official twitter page later in the night. Both the texts read quite similar.

However, Buckley was apparently part of Trump Jr.’s speech writing team. Speaking to Business Insider, he said, “I was a speechwriter for the speech. So there’s not a plagiarism issue.” Buckley just used some of his past material when writing Trump Jr’s speech.

Here is the allegedly plagiarized portion of Donald Trump Jr’s address:

“Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.”

The following is the text from the article written by Buckley published May 2, 2016:

“… No better educated that when they first walked in the classroom door. What should be an elevator to the upper class is stalled on the ground floor. Part of the fault for this may be laid at the feet of the system’s entrenched interests: the teachers’ unions and the higher-education professoriate. Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers.”