The Trump campaign’s plagiarism should come as no surprise
We shouldn’t be surprised. Through night one, the GOP convention has provided enough fodder for decades of research on the American psyche, the types of politics and decisions that have led to one of the most divisive moments in a global century, and a reshaping of many institutions the nation holds dear.
The presumptive Republican nominee appeared in Cleveland last night in a cloud of Wrestlemania-blue fog. Even the most seasoned electoral prognosticators have admitted the now-miniscule sample size of the few election cycles in the modern era. In the new normal, the Libertarian candidate is getting a serious look from voters. Throughout, we’ve learned objective truth is, well, dead. Non-political correctness is pro forma. As is what appears to be grade-school plagiarism.
Last night – and, now, perhaps overshadowing the week – the convention’s opening was meant to give the character of the Trump family a wide berth, and root the party in a semi-serious discussion of safety in America. Melania Trump’s now-iconic plagiarism is something much more. A sign, likely, of a Republican Party and a conservative, white establishment keen to capitalize on the achievements of leaders like Michelle Obama while the rift with other voters of color grows even more severe. With a joke candidate now running as a serious disruptor, the Republicans are not helping their case, and this will likely further alienate any minority voters and supporters, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator.
Melania and her speechwriter are not solely to blame, and the plagiarism controversy is a distraction from the deeper, more serious issues at play. The campaign, high from the warp speed of a Mike Pence vice presidential announcement, likely didn’t give much thought to the work product they’d debut on night one. The system, too, demonstrates a culture of carelessness and sensationalism that treats this and other flash-in-the-pan controversies as kindling. We’re to blame, too. Voters must vocally demand more of their candidates and the media that feeds them.
For brand Trump, nary a scratch
In his months as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, Trump has weathered much worse: Trump’s racist comments against Judge Curiel, Trump’s anti-semitic and white supremacist-inspired tweets and retweets, Trump’s told-you-so tweets during a national uptick in gun violence, his campaign’s bungled Mike Pence VP announcement. He will be just fine.
The media expects his Thursday evening speech will offer him a more presidential setting and tone. Ivanka’s speech, likely the most highly anticipated debut of the week, will lightly elevate the Trump family again. Melania might retreat from the public eye for a time. The divisions in his campaign team, however, show a unit likely unfit for the long haul, let alone a team that can govern effectively. Yet again, Trump’s fans and followers likely won’t be swayed. In fact, Trump will most certainly see an uptick in the head-to-head polls following the convention that will best the same upswings McCain and Romney saw in their convention debuts, sending Democrats and the media in a frenzy during a critical time for the party’s Philadelphia moment next week.
Melania Trump, like any public figure, will ultimately need to address these accusations one way or another, and the campaign might axe a low-level staffer, although it has not taken the same approach for staffers’ more severe offenses. Despite the wide-open opportunity to paint a more human picture of the Donald, Melania’s chance to tell the story of an immigrant for a new generation, and with weeks of lead time for a national debut of this magnitude, her speech was very much in the Trump vein of national entertainment. The most effective refutations of Melania’s errors will come tonight and later this week, as Trump’s children take the stage and provide a deeper picture of the candidate, but the (minor) damage is done.
A way forward for brands, media and communications
It is telling that an out-of-work journalist watching the convention identified an incidence of plagiarism that thousands of credentialed reporters could not. Following the primary season, the nation’s most decorated journalists have admitted they hadn’t taken Candidate Trump as seriously, giving him far less scrutiny than other more serious candidates throughout the primary process. The media’s response and the tenor of conversation throughout the general election season has been much of the same.
Whether overcome by the pageantry of the convention, the scary undertones and explicit overtures toward the party’s history of racism, the inflammatory rhetoric of speakers Scott Baio and a vehement Rudy Giuliani, Melania’s speech – and her not-too-awful delivery – reflected a dangerous lack of depth in both public figures and the media meant to scrutinize them. A years-long insistence on ever-faster, snackable journalism and content is beginning to catch up with the media, and it is no coincidence that fast, citizen-led media like Facebook Live is becoming the last bastion of a sort of objective truth.
This cleaving of ideologies, and the symptoms of a culture moving too fast, is playing out across every major institution. We might see brands and entities embrace this coding and reality in other, more obvious ways. Budweiser has already tipped its proverbial hat toward Trumplike boldness and brashness with its temporary America rebrand, offering real Americans and Bernie bros alike the opportunity to beer pong responsibly. Other brands might play honest, loud, maybe mean, maybe rude, all in the interest of reaching demographics with these deep concerns amid an institutional shift.
Though Trump’s base likely won’t care a nit, the Melania Trump plagiarism flap has led to finger-pointing across his organization and the GOP apparatus as a whole. One clue – when dealing with external moments of crisis moments, internal finger-pointing and –wagging remains an organization’s greatest enemy. Team Trump is an entity sorely without discipline or strong, decisive crisis communicators, and while Democrats have proven capable of mending their divisions with carefully choreographed moments over the past eight weeks, Republicans appear nowhere near in agreement to the future of their party and the country as a whole.
The fractures in government, culture, media and politics are all real – and this real-time shift in right, wrong, red, purple and blue is a generational transformation. There is no more middle, and this new reality is one that has created a lack of responsibility from policy positions to the words that appear on the page or teleprompter. Whether or not Trump ultimately succeeds, in adapting to this shift of toward new, individualized truth, we’ll need to drastically reconsider the integrity with which we tackle the challenges ahead.
Matt Spector is the founder and principal of Bow Bridge, a public affairs and creative intelligence partner for leaders, brands and businesses