Cleveland — One delegate said everyone fell in love with her. Another compared her to Jackie Kennedy. Melania Trump’s star turn at the Republican National Convention Monday night captivated a GOP crowd that had rarely heard from her through months of her husband’s tumultuous 2016 White House campaign.
Her speech also drew attention after the discovery that two passages of her remarks matched nearly word-for-word the speech that first lady Michelle Obama delivered in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention. The passages in question focused on lessons that Trump’s wife says she learned from her parents and the relevance of their lessons in her experience as a mother.
The passages came near the beginning of her roughly 10-minute speech. Mrs. Trump’s address was otherwise distinct from the address that Mrs. Obama gave when then-Sen. Barack Obama was being nominated for president.
In Mrs. Trump’s speech in Cleveland, she said: “From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life.”
In Mrs. Obama’s 2008 speech in Denver, she said: “And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, that you do what you say you’re going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.”
Another passage with notable similarities that follows two sentences later in Mrs. Trump’s speech addresses her attempts to instill those values in her son. “We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow,” Mrs. Trump said. “Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
In the first lady’s 2008 speech, she said, “Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.”
The Trump campaign issued a statement just before 2 a.m. that did not outright deny lines in Melania Trump’s speech resembled Michelle Obama’s 2008 address.
“In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success,” Jason Miller, senior communications advisor for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday evening.
Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, said Tuesday she thought Melania Trump “was elegant and outstanding” and she bashed media coverage of the speech.
“If only they gave the same attention to Hillary’s emails that they gave to Melania’s speech last night, the world would be a great place,” McDaniel said at the start of the Michigan delegation’s Tuesday morning breakfast.
In an interview with NBC News taped ahead of her convention appearance and posted online early Tuesday, Mrs. Trump said of her speech, “I wrote it.” She added that she had “a little help.
On the whole, Mrs. Trump presented a softer and gentler candidate. She said: “He is tough when he has to be, but he is also kind and fair and caring. This kindness is not always noted, but it is there for all to see. That is one reason I fell in love with him to begin with.”
The Slovenian-born former model, 24 years her husband’s junior, also reintroduced herself, showing poise as well as devotion to her adopted country and to her husband’s cause. Mrs. Trump, appearing in a striking white dress with elbow-length sleeves ending in big, puffy cuffs, spoke after an uncharacteristically brief introduction from her husband, who kissed her and called her “my wife, an amazing mother, an incredible woman.”
Prior to Monday, Mrs. Trump had spoken on her husband’s behalf only a few times, and briefly, and her remarks Monday lasted roughly 10 minutes as she spoke slowly in heavily accented English. But afterward delegates were gushing.
“I think she’s going to be a great asset. She’s just magnificent,” said John Salm, a delegate from Virginia. “Honestly she reminds me of Jackie Kennedy.” “I think everybody fell in love with her tonight,” said Deedee Kelly, a delegate from Omaha, Nebraska. “She seemed to talk from her heart, she really did.”
The 46-year-old made clear her love for her husband, testifying to a softer side of the blustering real estate mogul the country knows. And without dwelling on her own humble upbringing in an industrial town in what was then a part of communist Yugoslavia, she spoke of her family, her sister Ines, her “elegant and hard-working mother Amalia,” and her father Viktor, who “instilled in me a passion for business and travel.”
“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say,” Mrs. Trump said, adding that she has passed those values to the couple’s 10-year-old son, Barron.
Mrs. Trump also gave a hint of what she might try to do as first lady. “I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in our country who need it the most,” she said, describing helping children and women as “one of the many causes dear to my heart.”
Even as she largely avoided the spotlight prior to Monday, Mrs. Trump briefly became an issue in the race in March, when an anti-Trump super PAC released an ad with a risque photo of her from a GQ magazine photo shoot, showing her handcuffed to a briefcase, lying on a fur blanket.
“Meet Melania Trump. Your Next First Lady,” the ad said. Trump responded by re-tweeting side-by-side images of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife, with an unflattering grimace, and Mrs. Trump in a gauzy, glamorous pose.
If Trump were to be elected president, Mrs. Trump would be the only first lady who is the third wife of a president and the first to be born and raised in a communist nation. She wouldn’t be the first model — Pat Nixon and Betty Ford both modeled, too. And Louisa Adams, who was born in England, was the first president’s wife to be born in another country.
The glitter and glitz of being Donald Trump’s wife is a far cry from the sleepy southeastern industrial town of Sevnica, where she was born in 1970 as Melanija Knavs. Her father was a car dealer while her mother worked in a textile factory. The family lived in apartment blocks overlooking a river and smoking factory chimneys.
She found an escape through modeling when she was spotted in the Slovenian capital by a photographer. At age 16, she took modeling jobs in Milan and Paris. She changed her name to Melania Knauss and settled in New York in 1996. Two years later, she met her future husband at a party in Manhattan.