Claims that First Lady Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama in a tweet denouncing the Charlottesville clashes are spreading online via an Internet meme.
Below is an example of the meme –
On August 12th, First Lady Melania Trump tweeted the following post condemning the violence in Charlottesville during a series of white supremacist marches.
Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let’s communicate w/o hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence. #Charlottesville
Shortly after Trump posted the tweet, the meme above appeared online claiming that Melania Trump had actually plagiarized Michelle Obama who said almost the exact same thing in April 2016.
“Our nation encourages freedom of speech, but let’s communicate without hate in our hearts. No good comes of that.”
Of course in 2016 Melania Trump was heavily criticized for giving a speech at the RNC convention that had a striking resemblance to a speech given by Michelle Obama at the DNC convention 8 years earlier, leading to accusations of plagiarism.
In the case of this 2017 tweet however, while the August 2017 tweet from Melania Trump is real, we can find no record of Michelle Obama saying anything similar back in 2016, as the online meme claims she did.
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Any Internet search of the phrase Obama was supposed to have used finds nothing. She did not post that message from any of her social media accounts (not during April 2016 or any other day) and there are no records of speeches given on that day.
While it is essentially impossible to definitively conclude that Michelle Obama has never uttered those words in some form at some point in time, unless the creator of the meme or anyone else accusing Trump of plagiarising (in this instance) can provide proof otherwise, this would have to be dismissed as a hoax.
Until such a time when someone can prove this is indeed an example of plagiarism, we do not recommend spreading this online meme further.
