Donald Trump comments on Melania speech after plagiarism claims

Donald Trump has finally commented on his wife Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday night, two days after it was revealed Melania had seemingly plagiarized an earlier speech by Michelle Obama.

“Good news is Melania’s speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!” he wrote on Twitter, before taking a shot at both Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumed opponent in the presidential election, and the press. “The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania’s speech than the FBI spent on Hillary’s emails.”

During her speech on Monday night, Melania repeated exact words and phrases spoken by Michelle Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. In the wake of the controversy, Trump’s campaign released a statement claiming “Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking” in writing her “beautiful speech.”

Later, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, blamed Clinton for pushing the story out into the news media. “There’s a political tint to this whole issue. Certainly we’ve noted the Clinton camp was the first to get it out there in trying to say there was something untoward about the speech Melania Trump gave,” Manafort said. “It’s just another example, as far as we’re concerned, that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person.”

In an interview with CBS, Manafort later added, “We’re talking about words like compassion, love of family, respect. These are not words that belong to the Obamas.”

Defenses of Melania also included My Little Pony. In an interview with CNN, Republican National Convention chief strategist Sean Spicer said, “Melania Trump said, ‘The strength of your dreams and willingness to work for them.’ Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony said, ‘This is your dream. Anything you can do in your dreams, you can do now.’ I mean if we want to take a bunch of phrases and run them through a Google and say, ‘Hey, who else has said them?’ I can do that in five minutes.”

Read Trump’s tweets below.