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Melania Trump has been caught up in yet another embarrassing plagiarism scandal

Must try harder Melania

Melania Trump has been caught up in yet another embarrassing plagiarism scandal
08 May 2018

Over the long weekend, First Lady Melania Trump launched a new initiative aimed at helping out kids and young people. It’s called Be Best and you can’t really argue with the scheme’s plan to help children improve their overall well-being, fight drug abuse and have a healthier relationship with social media. 

Just try to ignore the painfully awkward body language between Melania and Donald, as well as the glorious irony that her husband is the single biggest Twitter bully on the planet.

“If you have a young person in your life — whether you are a parent or guardian, teacher, police officer, coach, religious or scout leader, relative or friend — I ask you to join me and commit to promoting values such as encouragement, compassion, and respect, both online and offline,” Melania said.

But, just like every proposal that lurches its way out of the bowels of the Trump White House, the announcement was almost immediately engulfed in scandal.

This time, people were accusing Melania of ripping off a very similar document about protecting young people online - from the Obama administration.


Read more: Melania Trump went to a funeral with Obama and looked happy for the first time ever


Melania’s initiative has a page on the official White House website that included a link saying: “Parents, click here to read Talking with Kids about Being Online, a booklet by First Lady Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission.”

The only problem is that, other than a short introduction, it’s totally identical to a document released by the Federal Trade Commission in 2014, back when Obama was president.

The words, the formatting, the images… all the same. Oh dear.

Realising they’d been caught red-handed, the website’s language was later updated to describe the pamphlet as “a Federal Trade Commission booklet, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump,” according to The Guardian.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Melania’s been caught pinching ideas from the Obamas. At the Republican National Convention in 2016, she lifted passages from Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Come on Melania! Every cheating school kid knows you have to at least try to change some of the words if you’re going to get away with plagiarism. Must try harder! 

(Image: Getty)