Mediaboss Marketing

Several websites pushed out a fresh accusation of plagiarism against First Lady Melania Trumpand once again, the alleged source for the supposedly ill-gotten words is former First Lady Michelle Obama.

On Saturday, August 12, as violence escalated in Charlottesville, Virginia, Mrs. Trump took to Twitter with this message: "Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate w/o hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence. #Charlottesville"

Sometime on Sunday, a meme appeared on Twitter, Facebook, and various other websites, that juxtaposed the words of the first lady's tweet and her picture with very similar words purportedly from Michelle Obama: "Our nation encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate without hate in our hearts. No good comes of that." The former first lady's picture also appears in the meme (shown below), as well as the date when Mrs. Obama allegedly made the remarks, April 16, 2016.

However, there is no evidence that Michelle Obama ever uttered those words or anything remotely close to them. The Obama White House archives do not indicate any speech or remarks by Michelle Obama on the date in question, nor does a broader search turn up any such remarks by the former first lady at any point during her husband's presidency. A review of contemporaneous news reports similarly comes up empty as well.

The photo of Mrs. Obama used in the meme comes from an October 13, 2016 appearance at a Hillary for America campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire. During her remarks, Mrs. Obama excoriated then-candidate Trump for vulgar remarks in a 2005 Access Hollywood taping. But again, the transcript of the speech contains nothing close to the words in the meme.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, within days the meme and related stories were shared on Twitter and Facebook thousands of times. Rickey Smiley, a comedian and TV-radio personality, featured the false story under the headline "First Lady Forger: Did Melania Trump Just Plagiarize Michelle Obama Again!?" Smiley's Facebook fan page and blog linked to a Raw Story piece which in turn used an International Business Times story as its source. Other sites responsible for wide distribution of the fake meme include an unofficial Bill Maher fan page and AlterNet News.

The meme plays off a 2016 incident in which the speech Melania Trump delivered at the Republican National Convention drew heavily on remarks made by Michelle Obama in 2008. A Trump campaign aide who wrote the speech for Mrs. Trump took responsibility for the uncredited words, saying that she took notes while Mrs. Trump read passages from Mrs. Obama's earlier speech. Those notes were incorporated into the final draft of the speech without attribution. The aide offered to resign, but Donald Trump declined her offer.

The new accusation of plagiarism, while drawn from the 2016 incident, seems to have been largely shared with the understanding that it was likely a hoax. In Rickey Smiley's posting for example, the article ends with "Before you pull out your pitchfork though, know that none of this has been confirmed. No one has proven that Michelle actually said or tweeted those words beforefor all we know, it could just be a meme gone out of control."

Even the original International Business Times story noted that it was an "unproven claim whether Melania stole Obama's words" and "[w]hile the possibility of plagiarism has not been ruled out in the latest instance, reports said the viral meme was most likely a spoof."

Whatever doubts existed, thousands of social media users enthusiastic spread the story based on the sensational headlines. While mainstream news outlets have largely avoided the story for now, Yahoo! News picked up and reprinted the International Business Times version with the headline "Melania Trump Accused Of Copying Michelle Obama Again." But while the IBT story headline included the phrase "Maybe Wrongly This Time," that caveat was missing in the Yahoo! Headline.

While the original source of the meme remains a mystery, the spread of false stories such as this is anything but.

If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email The Weekly Standard at factcheck@weeklystandard.com.

Read this article:
Fact Check: Did Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama on Twitter? - The Weekly Standard